Background
William Cocke was born in 1748 in Amelia County, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Abraham Cocke, a descendant of Richard Cocke who had come to Virginia from England as early as 1628 and Mary (Batte) Cocke.
(Presents a history of Virginia from its early exploration...)
Presents a history of Virginia from its early exploration and settlement to the state today
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(A history of Washington from the days of the Native Ameri...)
A history of Washington from the days of the Native Americans to the present highlights the state's economic and cultural development
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legislator military politician Soldier
William Cocke was born in 1748 in Amelia County, Virginia, United States. He was the son of Abraham Cocke, a descendant of Richard Cocke who had come to Virginia from England as early as 1628 and Mary (Batte) Cocke.
William Cocke studied law and was admitted to the bar in Virginia.
About the year 1774 Cocke moved to the frontier of settlement in the Holston Valley near the present boundary between Virginia and Tennessee. As captain of militiamen he helped guard the frontier during Lord Dunmore’s War. He fought the Indians and the Tories during the Revolution but was charged with cowardice.
In 1775 he had followed Daniel Boone into Kentucky and was there a member of the House of Delegates of the abortive colony of Transylvania. Two years later he served with his “Dear Old & ever admired friend, ” Thomas Jefferson, in the Virginia Assembly. In 1778 and on several subsequent occasions he sat in the legislature of North Carolina. When some of the western counties of North Carolina (the present East Tennessee), attempted during the years 1784-1788 to establish themselves as the State of Franklin, Cocke was a leader in this movement for separate statehood. He was a member of its legislature; he served on its Council of State; he was one of its brigadier-generals; he negotiated in its name with the Cherokee Indians; he was its unseated delegate to the Congress of the United States, where unsuccessfully he presented its memorial for recognition; and he was also its commissioner to North Carolina in a futile attempt to persuade the mother state to recognize its existence.
When the State of Franklin had ceased to exist, he returned as a member to the North Carolina legislature. When his western counties became the Southwest Territory, Cocke was a member of the territorial legislature and sponsored the bill for the creation of Blount College (the present University of Tennessee). In 1796 he was a member of the convention that transformed the territory into the State of Tennessee, and was sent by this state to Congress as one of its first senators.
In 1809 he was defeated by Willie Blount for governor of Tennessee, but the legislature immediately chose him to be a judge of the circuit court. For this office he was temperamentally unfitted. He was charged with showing partiality to his friends, impeached, and in 1812 removed from office. Nothing daunted, he volunteered for the campaign in East Florida, returned to take a seat in the Tennessee legislature, and from this rushed off at the age of sixty-five to fight as a private in the Creek War with such bravery as to win the praise of Andrew Jackson. In 18x4 he was appointed United States Agent to the Chickasaw Indians, but he failed to gain their confidence and was soon superseded. He spent his remaining years in Mississippi, and to round out his experience as a law-maker, he served in 1822 in the legislature of that state.
(A history of Washington from the days of the Native Ameri...)
(Presents a history of Virginia from its early exploration...)
Cocke was emotional, passionate, quick-tempered, intolerant. He loved his friends and hated his enemies and quarreled with both. He was an able orator but a poor judge.
Cocke was twice married; to Sarah Maclin and to the widow Kissiah Sims.