Cook Family Life

Family Life

John Francis Cook Jr. was born in the District of Columbia in September 1833. He was the son of John Francis Sr. and Jane Mann Cook. The Cook family had a reputation as being part of the elite of DC’s African-American community. Every generation of the Cook family has been physicians, entrepreneurs, and Civic Leaders. 

John Francis Cook, Sr. was born and remained a slave until the age of sixteen when he was purchased by his aunt, Aletha Tanner, a former slave that purchased her own freedom with earnings from selling garden vegetables. He worked as a shoemaker to pay his aunt back for his freedom. When Tanner died, both John Francis Cook, Jr. and Francis Datcher, father of fellow Central college student Samuel J. Datcher, were executors of her will. Cook, Sr. fled to Pennsylvania after the Snow’s Riot where he took refuge in the home of William Whipper in Philadelphia. He served as a secretary at the fifth Colored Convention in 1835 in Pennsylvania. This convention was where leaders of the African-American community fought to extend full rights to free Blacks and petitioned to grant emancipation to slaves. In 1836 he returned to Washington and resumed the direction of the Union Seminary, a school for DC’s free black community. Before becoming a teacher and religious leader he worked as an assistant messenger in the Government Land Office. He then went on to found the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church and became the first black man in the District of Columbia to be ordained a minister in the Presbyterian church. In 1870 John F. Cook Jr. was neighbors with George F. T. Cook. Jane who was  John. F. Cook Jr. and George F. T. Cook's mother was living with George at the time after the death of their father. 

Cook Family Members

John Francis Cook, Sr.  was married twice, having 6 children, four boys, and two girls, first to Jane Mann whom Cook Jr and George were born, then to Jane LeCount, to which his half-brother Samuel LeCount Cook was born. When he died he was held in high regard by both blacks and whites and the respect was passed down to his children after his death on April 7th, 1855. 

John Francis Cook Jr.’s brother George Cook became the first black superintendent for the District of Columbia where he worked for almost thirty years. His name also appeared on the Elite List.

John Francis Cook Jr.’s brother Samuel Le Count Cook was a graduate of the University of Michigan medical school and achieved prominence in Washington as a physician.