For the past few days, I’ve been reading a book I recently
purchased, “Creating Connecticut: Critical Moments That Shaped a Great State
(*1). This book has 24 chapters – 12 long ones which give lots of details,
interspersed with 12 short ones. I had read one of the long ones which was
about Eleazar Wheelock, a celebrated minister who spent 35 years ministering in
CT before moving to NH where he was the founder of Dartmouth University. But
one of his accomplishments was undertaking the education (and Christianization)
of several native Americans in what was called “Moors Indian Charity School.”
One of the individuals who was taught by Wheelock was a man named Samson Occam,
a Mohegan, who himself became a well-known minister.
The following short chapter was about Samson. This read in
part:
“On September 2, 1772, thousands
gathered in New Haven’s First Congregational Church to watch a rare encounter
between two Native Americans. …
The occasion was the hanging of
thirty-two-year-old Wampanoag Moses Paul and the execution sermon the Mohegan
Presbyterian minister Samson Occam was to deliver to the condemned man. Paul
was to be hanged for murdering Moses Cook, a fifty-two-year-old white man. Paul
had hit the man in the head with an iron bar while in a drunken rage at being
thrown out of a tavern. His public execution would be the first in New Haven
since 1749. …”
I won’t tell the rest of the story here – you’ll have to
buy the book to find out, or do some further online research yourself. One good
account can be found here (*2).
But since this took place in colonial New Haven, I wondered
if I had any genealogical connection to it. Since I have no Native American DNA,
I have no connection to either Samson Occam or to Moses Paul. But I do have
individuals with the name Cook in my ancestral tree and I thought I would see
if Moses Cook was related to me.
I first needed to find out more about Moses Cook. I started
looking in New Haven, but fairly quickly found out that the hanging was only
taking place there because that was the county seat. Moses was actually from
Waterbury and his death had been the previous year. One good source turned out
to be in a book written by Samuel Orcutt, who had written the history of
Wolcott. I’ve written about Orcutt before (*3, *4, *5). In his book “The
Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Valleys” (*6), we find the following:
“Mention should also be made of
Moses Cook of Waterbury, whose residence was on the north-east corner of Cook
and Grove streets, where another branch of the family still resides. The Crime
was committed in the town of Bethany, on the 7th of December, 1771,
by an Indian named Moses Paul. … On the evening of December 7, 1771, at the
house of Mr. Clark of Bethany, while under the influence of liquor, he
quarrelled with the proprietor. He seized a flat-iron weighing four and a half
pounds (Paul himself testified that it was a club), and aiming a blow at Mr.
Clark, missed him, and struck Mr. Cook who was standing near. The wound
terminated fatally five days afterward. …”
Armed with this new information, I was able to do the
necessary detail research. There were more connections that I even suspected.
First, Moses Cook’s grandfather was Samuel Cook (1641-1703).
Samuel Cook is my great*8 grandfather, making Moses my first cousin, eight
times removed. Moses (1716-1771) had been married twice, first to Sarah Colver (1716-1760).
Sarah’s father, Samuel Colver (1684-1750) is my great*6 grandfather, making
Sarah my great*6 aunt and Moses my great*6 uncle through that connection. When
Sarah died, Moses then married Dinah Warner (1723-1792) in 1765. But Dinah’s
grandfather was Ephraim Warner (1669-1753) who is my great*6 grandfather. Thus,
Moses is also my first cousin, six times removed, through his second wife. There
are likely other connections farther back, but having him be a first cousin by
blood, an uncle by one marriage, and a first cousin by another marriage was not
expected.
I also note that the intersection of Cook[e] and Grove Streets
in Waterbury is only a few blocks from the church our family attended when I
was growing up and one that we drove through on a regular basis. It’s also
possible that I have connections to David Clark who owned the tavern as my aunt,
Gertrude “Trudy” [Clark] Pierpont, lived in Prospect, the town next door to
Bethany, where the Clark family had lived for many generations.
Finally, I’d like to make reference to another strange story
about Moses Cook which I found in another book (*7). It appears that when Moses
died his skull was not buried with him, but was disconnected from his body and
used as evidence at the trial the following year. After the trial was over, it
was given to his daughter, Hannah [Cook] Bronson, who kept it (in several
pieces) in a “little cloth bag” for some 70 years. It was finally buried with
her in 1841.
Notes:
*1 – Creating Connecticut: Critical Moments That Shaped a
Great State, Walter W. Woodward, 2020
*6 – The Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Valleys, by
Samuel Orcutt, 1882
*7 – Breakneck: The Early Settlement of Middlebury,
Connecticut – from 1657 to its Incorporation as a Town, by Raymond E. Sullivan,
2010
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