George Grimston Cookman was born in Kingston-on-Hull, Yorkshire, England, on October 21, 1800, to George and Mary Cookman. He joined a Methodist society in 1820 and in 1821 he visited the United States for the first time, on business for his father.
Later, upon the advice of minister friends, he determined to go to the United States to minister. He boarded the Orient on the 28th of March, 1825, landing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, May 16th, 1825. His first year in the United States, he served Saint George’s Church in Philadelphia.
In 1826 he was appointed to the Kensington and Saint John churches in Philadelphia.
At this point in his life, he hoped to go as a missionary to Africa, but this did not happen. In 1828 he was stationed at New Brunswick, New Jersey, where his preaching drew much public acclaim.
In 1829 he was sent to the circuit in Talbot County, Maryland, where a long-held dream of preaching to the black population was first realized. His ministry and advocacy of emancipation garnered the praises of Frederick Douglass.
His next appointments were to Saint George’s in Philadelphia, for two years and then to Newark, New Jersey for a year.
Cookman was then transferred to the Baltimore conference where he served all of the congregations in that city except Fells Point. Then he was called to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just as the Methodists were revitalizing Dickinson College. In 1838 he was sent to Wesley Chapel in Washington, District of Columbia His preaching there led to his being proposed as Chaplain of the Senate (1839).
While serving there, he was able to bring about a renewed commitment to Christian faith in former President Franklin Pierce.
In 1840 he took charge of the Alexandria, Virginia, church. Review Cookman was lost at sea when the steamship Steamship President (then the largest passenger ship afloat) departed on her third and final westward crossing on March 11, 1841, to England, never to be heard from again.
The liner was last seen from the Packet Ship ‘’Orpheus’’ in a terrific gale on March 12. All 136 of the crew and passengers perished.
