| John Hartwell Cocke | |
|---|---|
John Hartwell Cocke of Bremo (1859, Edward Troye) |
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| Born | September 19, 1780 Surry County, Virginia, USA |
| Died | June 24, 1866 (aged 85) Bremo Bluff, Virginia, USA |
| Allegiance | United States of America |
| Years of service | 1812–1813 |
| Rank | Brigadier general |
| Commands held | Virginia militia |
| Battles/wars | War of 1812 |
| Other work | Builder of Bremo Plantation Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia |
John Hartwell Cocke II (or Jr.) (September 19, 1780 – June 24, 1866) was an American military officer, planter and businessman. During the War of 1812, Cocke was a brigadier general of the Virginia militia.[1]
After his military service, he invested in the James River and Kanawha Company and helped Thomas Jefferson establish the University of Virginia.[2] The family estate that Cocke built at Bremo Plantation is now a National Historic Landmark.[1]
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John Hartwell Cocke II was born on September 19, 1780, at the Mount Pleasant plantation in Surry County, Virginia.[3] With the exception of a younger brother, Robert Kennon Cocke who died in 1790, John Hartwell Cocke II was the only son of eight children born to John Hartwell Cocke I and Elizabeth Kennon Cocke.[4] The elder Cocke was a colonel who married Elizabeth Kennon from another plantation named Mount Pleasant in Chesterfield County, Virginia.[5] The younger Cocke was orphaned by the age of twelve and was left his father's plantation estate and slaves. At the age of fourteen, Cocke enrolled at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he stayed at the home of Colonel Champion Travis.[3] Cocke graduated as part of the class of 1798.[6] Upon his twenty-first birthday in 1801, he legally inherited the Mount Pleasant plantation.[7]
Cocke married Anne Blaus (or Blaws) Barraud in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 25, 1802. Her father, Philip Barraud, was a physician who practiced medicine in Williamsburg, where Cocke had studied. Anne stayed in Norfolk until March 1803, while Cocke renovated the plantation home in Surry County.[3] The Cockes had a son, John Hartwell, in 1804 and a daughter, Louisiana Barraud, in 1806 at Mount Pleasant. In 1809, Cocke sold the plantation to his sister Sally and her husband Nicholas Faulcon and moved to Bremo on the northern bank of the James River in Fluvanna County, Virginia. The family had another son, Philip St. George, in 1809 and another daughter, Ann Blaus, in 1811 at Bremo.[7]
During the War of 1812, Cocke became a brigadier general in command of the Virginia militia based out of Camp Carter and Camp Holly.[6] His brigade was composed of companies of troops from Fluvanna County.[8] From 1812 to 1813, Cocke led the defense of Richmond, Virginia along the Chickahominy River against British forces.[9]
Cocke was noted for being a distinguished officer;[10] the strict discipline he enforced upon insubordinate soldiers was compared to that of Baron von Steuben.[8] Cocke rode a bay stallion named Roebuck during the war.[11]
After the war, Cocke returned to his estate at Bremo, where he again had another son, Cary Charles, in 1814.[7] Cocke's wife Anne died in December 1816, a few months after the birth of their youngest daughter, Sally Faulcon. Anne was buried at Bremo Recess.[12]
In 1819, Cocke completed construction of a large plantation mansion at Upper Bremo with master builder John Neilson, who had worked with Thomas Jefferson on Monticello.[13] That year, Cocke was appointed by Virginia governor James Patton Preston to the first Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia. By the time Cocke retired from the board in 1852, annual enrollment at the university had reached 400 students.[2]
In 1835, Cocke joined the board of directors of the James River and Kanawha Company, which was established to develop canals to facilitate water transportation along 200 miles (320 km) of the James River.[2] The river traffic became an important part of the local economy in the following decades, but a series of floods and the American Civil War brought an end to this era.[14] By 1848, Cocke started another plantation in Alabama, where he was teaching self-government to slaves for eventual emancipation. He had spent some of his own money to send freed slaves to Liberia.[15] In 1855, Cocke traded his mansion for the smaller home of his son Cary Charles on the plantation, where he retired for the remainder of his years.[16]
John Hartwell Cocke's son Philip St. George Cocke became a colonel in the Confederate States Army, commanding troops at the Battle of Blackburn's Ford and the First Battle of Bull Run. Though Philip St. George was promoted to brigadier general in 1861, he committed suicide that year over perceived slights from his superior officers.[17]
In 1881, last surviving son Cary Charles Cocke, along with William Cocke and Charles E. Cosby, purchased land nearby in Bremo Bluff to move a chapel that John Hartwell Cocke had built for his slaves on the plantation.[18] Consecrated as part of an episcopal church, the Bremo Slave Chapel was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 1979 and the National Register of Historic Places in March 1980.[19] Cocke's plantation estate was declared a National Historic Landmark as Bremo Historic District in November 1971.[20]
Cocke was a longtime associate of former president Thomas Jefferson, sometimes trading for items grown at Jefferson's Monticello estate.[21] Cocke collaborated with James Madison, James Monroe, and Joseph Carrington Cabell to fulfill Jefferson's dream of establishing the University of Virginia. Cocke and Jefferson were appointed to the building committee to supervise the construction of the new university. Cocke's conservative practicality occasionally clashed with Jefferson's creative aesthetics, such as his opposition to Jefferson's flat roof design that he felt would compromise the durability of buildings for students.[22]
Cocke's journals have attracted the attention of historians in recent years because of the ongoing debate over Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. Cocke wrote of his knowledge that Jefferson had fathered children with his slave mistress.[23] However, unlike former government employee James T. Callender, who sought to discredit Jefferson with scandal while in office, Cocke never brought up the issue until years after his colleague had passed away.[24]
All Batchelors [sic], or a large majority at least, keep as a substitute for a wife some individual of the[ir] own Slaves. In Virginia this damnable practice prevails as much as any where, and probably more, as Mr. Jefferson's example can be pleaded for its defense.—John Hartwell Cocke, April 23, 1859[25]
Media related to John Hartwell Cocke at Wikimedia Commons