Talk:Ephraim Cooke

There are two Ephraim Cooks mixed together here
There are two Ephraim Cooks mixed together here. One of the most important arguments to support this is that the Yarmouth Ephraim Cook of the Mayflower lineage of Francis Cooke was borne in 1737. It seems very unlikely that he was a sea Captain of the Baltimore at the age of 12 when the Baltimore entered Halifax with the new English settlers in 1749.

The Yarmouth Ephraim Cooke was the one who had the lower part of his leg amputated when a log fell and crushed it whilst he was helping build new fortifications at Fort Edward, New York (not the block house), a fact that is never mentioned of the Halifax Ephraim, but happily mixed together by some inaccurate accounts.

Ephraim Cook of Yarmouth has a clear documented lineage to the Francis Cooke of the Mayflower that eliminates the possibility that he was the same Ephraim of Halifax, Mahone Bay, the Captain of the Baltimore or the Captain of the snow Edward that transported exiled Acadians Rockeiro (talk) 22:50, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * oh great catch. I am rolling through town (this article) to throw up an infobox but going through even just the first source, it seems like the older Ephraim Cook was the younger's father. which one do we want here? the one who helped establish Halifax? I'll stick with him since that seems to be the main point in the lede. I'm going to go through sources but def look at over if you want to, to make sure it makes sense!
 * my starting point: The book by Brown (p 227) says that Capt. Ephraim Cook (as opposed to Capt Ephraim Cooke, the elder) helped his father build was "quite likely... the block-house at Mahone Bay"; he says he helped build it in 1775, the previous page says Cooke (elder) moved to Mahone Bay to build the block house in 1774. It also says that he (younger) settled in Chebogue Harbor ~1762 which would make sense with a 1737 birth year, i.e., it tracks better than the existing claim on the page about Cook commanding a ship in 1749. That was probably the elder. Brown's book also says (p 226) that Cooke (elder) settled with a "household of sixteen" in Halifax in 1752, which sounds to me an implication of him having ~14 children (and possibly other relatives) in his house with him and his wife. obviously would not make sense for Cook the younger at 15. - actually, Cooke settled in Halifax in 1749 and left in 1754.Puppies937 (talk) 03:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ok, finished looking through the sources and I can say with pretty firm certainty that you're right, these two ephriam cook(e)s are getting mixed up, in part because the yarmouth cook didn't try to fight anyone and the halifax cooke tried to fight EVERYONE. I'm going to move forward with writing about the halifax/mahone bay cooke and will post the yarmouth cook sources here once I'm done, in case someone wants to write about him. tbh halifax cooke is a blast to read about. he is the definition of crotchedy old man. anyway, looks like some of these sources understandably got these two mixed up - I do genealogy and this happened in my fam with two unrelated jerks with the same unusual name in the same small, virginia town, so it was prob just sloppy cobbling info together decades ago. Puppies937 (talk) 04:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

removed Ephraim Cook refs
See above convo. About to post my update.

I just finished teasing apart the Ephraim Cook(e)s--I can't find anything about Cooke after the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. It is mentioned in this source - but that source also seems to cross the lineages of the Halifax and Yarmouth Cook(e)s. I am not fully convinced that the younger Cook is not Cooke's son, entirely based on the existing source by George Stanley Brown, but could not find anything verifying that Cooke had any family whatsoever. I am also unsure about this source which, if you read the Halifax-only version of the article I am posting, you will see that the idea of Cooke encouraging Charles Lawrence to establish an elected assembly is laughable (I say this genuinely; this guy is a hoot), especially in the 1757 with Joshua Mauger, who Cooke did work with in Halifax--but Cooke was more or less pushed out of town by creditors so it doesn't seem likely he would return just 3 years later for this.

Other sources I removed that pertain to Yarmouth Cook:
 * Place-names of the Province of Nova Scotia (namesake of Cooks Beach (Nova Scotia))
 * Cook Family on manser.ca
 * Place-names and places of Nova Scotia. Public Archives of Nova Scotia, 1967 (no link)
 * A History of the County of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia

And these facts (not cited):
 * DOB 1 June 1737; DOD 17 Nov 1821, buried in Chebogue Cemetery
 * After mentioning that he lost his leg while building the block house -- "Another account of the story of his leg suggests he lost it while serving in Capt. Gamaliel Bradford’s company of Colonel Doty’s Regiment in New York. While building Fort Cosby at Schenectady, New York, he is reported to have lost his leg in 1758, during the French and Indian War."

Puppies937 (talk) 16:37, 30 November 2023 (UTC)