Biography of Barnabas COOK of Maine and WV

----from Don Norman's files

Barnabas Cook, a son of Saul and Elizabeth (Snow) Cook, was born April 15, 1784, in at Litchfield, Kennebec Maine and died in 1862 at Amma, Roane County, WV. His monument at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Roane County WV lists him as a veteran of the War of 1812. 

He married a widow, Lydia (Williams) Adams, in Maine. Lydia, a daughter of Jonathan and Rachel Williams, was born Aug 31, 1782 at Bowdoin, Sagadoc Maine and died April 17, at Litchfield, Kennebec, Maine. 

When Barnabas and Lydia were married about 1806, her first husband was supposed to have been lost at sea. However, sometime between 1816 and 1820, Lydia formed a habit of taking long walks in the woods. Barnabas became curious and followed and found that she was meeting her first husband, who was very much alive. 

Not long after, Barnabas loaded a covered wagon and left Lydia, five children and Bowdoin, Maine for northwestern Ohio. Apparently there was no formal divorce. Divorces were almost impossible to obtain in those days and that difficulty was usually overcome by placing a couple of hundred miles between the parties. 

In the 1850's Lydia filed an application for a pension as a widow of Barnabas Cook, a veteran of the War of 1812. Within a short time, Barnabas went to Charleston and filed a deposition that he was alive and well and no one's deceased spouse.

Once Barnabas arrived in Ohio, he became a minister of the Disciples of Christ and was sent as a missionary to that part of Kanawha County VA that is now Calhoun County WV. He was a pioneer of Kanawha county, where he served as justice of the peace and one term as Sheriff. He also managed to spend much time preaching the Christian gospel over a period of twenty-five years. The marriage records of Kanawha are strewn with his name and reports of marriages that he performed. According to "Hardesty's History of Calhoun County", Barnabus was one of the very early settlers on the West Fork of the Little Kanawha River in what is now Calhoun County, WV. 

He met and married his second wife, Christianna McCune about 1820, after moving to the West Fork Community. Christianna was born in 1804, A daughter of Irish immigrants Peter and Christina (O'Brien) McCune. 

Daniel DeWeese, a Civil War veteran (who was a native of Gilmer and Calhoun counties), recorded the following, in his 1905 book, Recollections and Experiences of a Lifetime: "Squire Cook, in company with a comrade, Elijah McCumber, came as missionaries to the then wilderness of the West Fork, and Cook was the first minister of the gospel to preach a sermon within the present limits of Washington district, Calhoun County." "Squire Barnabus Cook married Christiana McCune, a daughter of Peter McCune, before referred to, while I was at Squire Cook's, who then lived just above the road opposite where what is now known as the Dock Parsons place, just South of the Lee district line. In the fall of 1841, I was at Squire Cook's when one of the settlers in the Squire's bailiwick, Daniel Coger, who had sold his wife sometime previous to Timothy McCune for an averagable deer's skin, dressed to be as large as a doe's hide, in delinquency of which payment, Coger sought a redress of grievance in Squire Cook's court, it being the first law suit that I ever attended, both litigants and witnesses being present and the cause coming on for hearing, the court heard all that was adduced by plaintiffs and defendants and the material facts being overwhelmingly in favor of the plaintiff, judgment was accordingly awarded for the deer hide and the costs upon which Wm. Truman, constable, was armed with an execution and commanded by the court to proceed accordingly." 

Barnabas died in 1862 and Christina in 1879 

Children of Barnabas and Lydia: Barnabas, James, Mary, Rebecca, Samuel. 

Children of Barnabas and Christiana: Elizabeth, Martha, Peter, Christiana, Barnabas Snow, Saul, Timothy, Catherine, John, Jane, Simeon, Thankful. 

(photo by Tom Cook, August 2004)