Joseph Willis Cook
Joseph W. Cook was born on October 27, 1836, in Unionville, Ohio, to Moses Cook and Hannah Pixley. His father was a farmer who owned $1,200 of real estate in 1850. The family moved to Crete, Illinois, in the early 1840s. Cook grew up and attended school there, and by the early 1860s, he was working as a blacksmith.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 5, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company F of the 8th Illinois Cavalry later that day. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 7 inches tall, with brown hair and blue eyes. The regiment took part in the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Gettysburg. He mustered out in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 17, 1865. As a Chicago editor later observed, Cook was a “man of great endurance, a superb horseman and a dead shot,” and he “soon became one of the most noted scouts in a regiment famous for such work.”
He returned to his parents’ household in Crete after the war and resumed his work as a blacksmith. By 1870, he owned $2,000 of real estate and $1,000 of personal property. Soon afterward, however, a “love of adventure” drove him westward, and he spent the next thirty years “engaged in hunting and mining in every gold and silver bearing state in the northwest.” In 1880, he was working as a blacksmith in Bozeman, Montana. In the early 1900s, he contracted rheumatism and lung disease while working in a machinery warehouse. He eventually returned to Crete, and he died there on June 5, 1908.
DATABASE CONTENT
| (1448) | Cook, Joseph Willis | 1836-10-27 | 1908-06-05 |
- Conflict Side: Union
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: Private
- Rank out: Private
- Rank highest: Private
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 1
- (3241) [writer] ~ Joseph W. Cook to Moses H. Cook et al., 22 March 1863
People - Records: 6
- (1449) Cook, Myron H. is the [sibling of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
- (1450) Cook, Moses H. is the [parent of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
- (1451) Cook, Hannah Curtis is the [parent of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
- (1452) Cook, Alice Maria is the [sibling of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
- (1453) Cook, Nancy Francelia is the [sibling of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
- (1454) Cook, (?) is the [aunt/uncle of] (1448) Cook, Joseph Willis
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 1
- (423) [enlisted] [F] ~ 8th Illinois Infantry
SOURCES
1850, 1870, and 1880 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Databases of Illinois Veterans Index, 1775-1995, available from Ancestry.com; Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, available from Ancestry.com; The Chicago Heights Star, 11 June 1908.
