Emery Cook’s biography, Akron Township, Tuscola County, Michigan

Copyright © 2000 by Bonnie Petee. This copy contributed for use in 
the MIGenWeb Archives.  

 

MIGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE:  These electronic pages may NOT be 
reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any 
other organization or persons.  Persons or organizations 
desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent 
of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, 
and contact the listed MIGenWeb archivist with proof of this 
consent. The submitter has given permission to the MIGenWeb 
Archives to store the file permanently for free access.

EMERY D. COOK, farmer and dealer in real estate, farming implements and 
machinery was born in Cattaraugus County, N. Y., January 21, 1835.  He was 
bereaved of his father at the age of fourteen years, and three years later he came to 
Oakland County, Mich., and spent some two years in farming enterprise.  He went 
thence to Saginaw County and entered the employ of John A. Westerfelt, Esq., at 
$14 per month. Five months later he became an overseer at $35 per month.  He 
remained there until nearly of age, and accumulated in all some $700.  In 1855 he 
bought 240 acres of land in Akron, in sections 14 and 21, and soon after returned 
to his native place, spent over three years, chiefly in lumbering and accumulated 
about $1,000 which was nearly all lost in the panic of 1856.
After this he returned and paid his land tax in Akron, but had only $3 left.  He 
next engaged in stock raising and continued the enterprise for several years with 
good success.
On January 14, 1860, he was married by B. W. Huston, Esquire, of Vassar, to 
Miss Jennie E. Waldo, of Akron.  She was born in Genesee County, N. Y., 
February 26, 1838.  She came with her parents from Bainbridge, Ohio, to Akron 
in 1856.  The first township meeting held in Akron was held at the residence of 
her father, Mr. Alvin Waldo, and she selected the name for the township.  Shortly 
after Miss Waldo taught one of the first three schools in the township.

Mr. and Mrs. Cook have had six children.  Emery and Freddie are deceased. 
Emery was the first person buried in the Akron cemetery.  The living children are 
Wilbert, Lucius, Ada, and Carrie.  Later Mr. Cook sold his Akron estate and made 
a tour in the west, but soon returned, and bought eighty acres of land in section 
31, Columbia, at $1,600, and resided there until the winter of 1883, when he sold 
that property for $3,200 and bought 440 acres in Akron.  On one occasion Mr. 
Cook started to take four bushels of corn to mill and one ox gave out when yet six 
miles from the mill.  Mr. Cook left him with a settler, and he and the other ox 
drew the grist to the mill, which he found broken.  He waited one week for his 
grist and earned five bushels of oats, which, with the grist and some seed corn, he 
and the ox drew back the six miles to where the other ox had been left.  Mr. Cook 
has been six years highway commissioner, and justice of the peace twenty-one 
years, and has never had an official judgment reversed by the higher courts.