Francis Cooke
Francis Cooke (c.1583 – April 7, 1663) was a Leiden Separatist, who went to America in 1620 on the Pilgrim ship Mayflower, which arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
[2] Cooke's first appearance in the historical record occurs on April 25, 1603, in Leiden, Holland, where he is named a witness at Raphael Roelandt's betrothal.
Cooke lived in Leiden for about six years before the 1609 arrival of the congregation of English Separatists led by Pastor John Robinson.
In the Leiden church Betrothal Book, Cooke is recorded as "Franchois Couck" and his bride, Hester Mahieu, with the witnesses to the marriage being two Walloons.
When the congregation decided to go to America in 1620, Cooke and his thirteen year–old son John committed to the voyage, but his wife, Hester, and the younger children remained in Leiden, waiting until the colony was better established.
The vessel struggled for two days against strong winter seas while they tried to head south to their planned destination of the Virginia Colony.
[9]There was an agreement signed in 1626 in which fifty-eight planters, including Cooke and many other "first comers", later known as "Purchasers", bought from the Merchant Adventurers from London all their colony stock, shares, and land.
[11] On January 3, 1627/8, Cooke was one of six men named to lay out the boundaries for the twenty-acre land grants that would be made to everyone who came as a planter, under the employ of the joint-stock company.
In early 1633, Cooke was assigned by the court to help resolve a dispute of a financial nature between Peter Browne and Dr. Samuel Fuller.
[13] Cooke was awarded damages by the court on March 7, 1636/7 in a civil case involving the abuse of his cattle against Mr. John Browne the younger, who had previously been an assistant and magistrate.
[14] In May 1640, Cooke and his son John were among those tasked to compute the number of acres of Edward Doty's meadows and make a report to the next court.
[12] In October 1640, Cooke was appointed to compute the land boundaries between Thomas Prence and Clement Briggs at Jones River.
[12] In 1640/41 he was one of twelve men tasked by the court to designate additional highways, and make a formal survey and mark the boundaries of plots of land in the town of Plain Dealing.
In June 1650, when he was almost seventy, he was still doing survey work, as when he and twelve others reported to the court that they had marked a new way from Jones River to the Massachusetts Path through John Rogers property.
And even in August 1659, in his late 70s, he was again called upon by the Plymouth Court to resolve a land boundary dispute between Thomas Pope and William Shurtliff.
"[16] On June 3, 1662, the General Court approved a list of thirty-three names "as being the firstborn children of this government," to receive two tracts of land purchased from the Indians by the colony.
