Letters on the Way to California

Lucy Rutledge Cooke

INTRODUCTION

It was in 1923 that Frank W. Cooke,1 a creative teacher of printing and journalism in the California city of Modesto, had his students set the type and publish a book that has become a classic: Crossing the Plains in 1852: Narrative of a Trip from Iowa to “The Land of Gold,” as Told in Letters Written During the Journey. The author of the letters was Lucy Cooke. They were “printed solely for the descendants of the author in memory of the faith and optimism that were hers throughout the perilous journey of those early days ‘Across the Plains.’” The letters had been edited by the author many years before and by others after her death and before publication.

The book has since been republished by the Plumas County Historical Society, Quincy, in 1980, and it is still in print. This time it has been produced under the aegis of Robert S. Cooke of Taylorsville, a grandson of William and Lucy Cooke. Robert Cooke has been most helpful in our Covered Wagon Women project.

It became our good fortune to learn that most of the letters still exist in the collection of the California Historical Society, San Francisco. It is with their gracious permission that the letters are here published directly from the manuscript collection. Only “Letter Number Four” of the printed version is missing. There is also material written by Lucy Cooke after the overland journey that is here omitted.

The manuscript collection was given to the California Historical Society by Mrs. Viola M. Priest, late granddaughter of Lucy and William Cooke, in 1951.2

The American story has always been one of mobility. Recently the United States Census Bureau revealed that each person in this country tends to move some ten times in a lifetime. The saga of Lucy Cooke tells a story of human mobility. Just look at the changing events and moves made by an English girl who emigrated to the United States in 1848:

Lucy and Marianne Rutledge, sisters, sailed from England on August 11, 1848, arriving in New York City on September 16.3

They traveled overland and by boat the length of the Erie Canal, then across the Great Lakes to Chicago, then overland again to Davenport, Iowa, where their uncle was a Baptist minister.

Soon afterwards her sister, Marianne, married a Mr. Willis and moved to Rockingham, Scott County, Iowa. They invited Lucy to come and live with them, which she did, giving music lessons to finance her way.

She, in turn, took music lessons from Mrs. Sarah Cooke of nearby Davenport. That is how she met young William Sutton Cooke. They were married on December 26, 1849.4 They lived in Moline, Illinois, until the spring of 1851, when they joined the senior Cookes5 in a new move to Dubuque, Iowa. Their first baby, Sarah, was born there on August 16, 1851.

During the spring of 1852 the “California fever,” as Lucy called it, was at a high pitch, and both families of William Cookes decided to start out for Pacific shores.

Let Lucy Cooke tell in a reminiscence the next part of the story published in the printed version of 1923:

 

Mr. Cooke, my husband’s father, secured twelve young men as passengers, who paid their fare to be delivered in Sacramento, California, so those, with our own family, consisting of ten persons, including myself and baby, made a goodly company. We started from Dubuque with four wagons, one a light spring drawn by two horses, the others having oxen with cows for “leaders.”

Mr. Cooke started his men folks first, to drive across Iowa to Council Bluffs on the western side of the state, whilst Mrs. Cooke, two young children, myself and baby, were driven by Mr. Cooke Sr. down to Davenport in our two-horse wagon with covered top and laden to the bows. We wished to bid farewell to remaining friends ere we started the “Plains across.” I spent my brief sojourn with my sister and her husband at Rockingham; then Mr. Cooke Sr. took our team and joined the company at the Bluffs, leaving Mrs. Cooke, myself and children to come down the river on the steamboat plying to St. Louis, and thence up the Missouri River to our destination, where our company would be awaiting us.

Lucy Cooke’s early letters describe this river voyage, then later ones tell of everyday happenings on the overland journey. A distinctive feature of her story is that they stopped over the winter in Salt Lake City and went on to California the following spring.

At the time of the crossing Lucy was 24 years old, and her husband, William the younger, was 25. The older Cookes, William and Sarah, had with them the rest of the children in their family: John Richards, 21 years old; Thomas, 19; Eve Anna, ten, who went by the nickname, “Lilly” Edward, seven; and Richard, five.6

While the rest got settled in Salt Lake City, “Pa” Cooke went on with the caravan to California. Sarah Cooke converted to Mormonism in Salt Lake City, and William Sr. did the same in California. He later returned to Salt Lake City, where he became a member of the police force. He was killed “in line of duty” on October 18, 1858, “shot by a ruffian named McDonald, alias Cunningham.”7

Mother Sarah Cooke took up her work as a teacher of vocal and instrumental music. Her pupils included children of Brigham Young, the Mormon leader. In later life she became disillusioned with her adopted faith and in the early 1870’s defected and became a leader in the Women’s National Anti-Polygamy Society.8

Lucy, William, and baby Sarah Ann went on from Salt Lake City in the spring of 1853. The last letter is written from the Carson Valley on the east side of the Sierra Nevada range. There they were to await the opening of the passes with the melting of the mountain snows. In early July they crossed the mountains, and, she says in reminiscing, “coming out by Roopley’s ranch, near Hangtown. We here slept the sleep of the just, under a spreading oak tree, and thus we passed our first night in California.”9 They settled in the gold country and spent much of the rest of their lives in EI Dorado County in the Placerville area. Lucy taught music to generations of children. William Cooke is listed as a miner in the 1860 Federal Census of California. They were then living in Iowa Hill in Placer County.10 Later he went into public service. In the 1880’s they moved to Virginia City, Nevada, where William served as judge and justice of the peace. He died in 1898.11

Lucy Cooke became blind for the last decade of her life. She moved to San Francisco, where two of her eight children lived.

A reporter for the Healdsburg, California Tribune, visited her in 1914, and the following story appeared in its June 4 edition:12

 

On a recent visit to San Francisco, I spent a short while at the home of a white-haired old lady – blind these many years. But though the light of her eyes has been extinguished, and unending earthly darkness has enveloped her, this old lady shows marvelous interest in the world’s activities of today, and her mind is alive with plans and hopes for the future.

“Oh, if I just had my sight. I feel I could set the world on fire!“

And if I could put into type the emphasis and vigor with which this declaration was made. I believe you would agree with me that she holds a marvelous grip on life and its opportunities.

How old, do you ask, is this white haired lady?

Well, she is not sensitive on this score, so it will not wound her feelings. I know, to say that the days of her life run back to the opening of the second quarter of the last century – March 1827, to be specific, and that totals up to eighty-seven years.

And more than sixty years of that long life have been spent here in the West – in the mining camps and towns of California and Nevada.

A year and two months later she died, and the same newspaper, the Healdsburg Tribune, published the obituary in its October 28, 1915, edition:13

 

IN MEMORIAM — MOTHER

 

AT REST – In San Francisco, October 22, 1915, Lucy Rutledge Cooke, aged 88 years, 7 months and 12 days; a native of London, England; mother of Mrs. A. Lane, of Reno; Mrs. W. G. Thompson, of San Francisco; W. R. Cooke of Orosi, F. W. Cooke of Healdsburg, Genevieve Cooke of San Francisco, J. E. Cooke of Taylorsville, Plumas County. Mrs. G. W. Hatch of Oakland and the late Henry S. Cooke of Virginia City, Nevada.

 

1 “Marginalia,” Calif. Hist. Soc. Qtly., XVIII, No. 4 (Dec., 1949), PP. 380-81.

2 “News of the Society,” Calif. Hist. Soc. Qtly, xxx, NO. 1 (March, 1951), P. 82. It is Ms. 443.

3 Much of the material that follows is from two sources. (I) The typewritten “Biography” that accompanies the Lucy Cooke manuscript letter collection; (2) the published version of the letters, hereafter referred to as Crossing the Plains. Its source is described in the beginning of this introduction.

4 Crossing the Plains, P. 80.

5 The Cooke family had also emigrated from England. William had been born in Manchester. The older Cooke’s had migrated to North Carolina from Leeds in 1828, when William was one year old. Typewritten “Biography.”

6 Two sources have been used to find the vital statistics of the Cooke family: A family Bible from which Robert S. Cooke, Taylorsville, California, copied the information and sent it to us; and the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, Iowa, P. 108.

7 Deseret News, October 20, 1858. Information supplied by Walter R. Jones, Librarian, Special Collections, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

8 Irving Wallace, The Twenty-seventh Wife (New York, 1961), P. 275; Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19 (Hartford, Conn., 1875), PP. 570–71. This last author was one of Brigham Young’s wives who left him and was aided and abetted by Sarah Cooke and the Anti-Polygamy Society.

9 Crossing the Plains, P. 71. There was a Hangtown in El Dorado County. If this memory of Eliza Cooke’s is correct, it contradicts Erwin G. Gudde, who in California Gold Camps (Berkeley, 1975), P. 150, tells of the tradition that Hangtown became Placerville ‘in 1850. Perhaps it went by both names for several years.

10 Eighth Census of the United States, California, Placer County, Iowa Hill Township, NO. 7.

11 Bob Cooke, “Memories & Comments, Taylorsville & Genesee,” Plumas County Hist. Soc., Plumas Memories, June 1974, P. 21. The death date is from the Cook family Bible.

12 Crossing the Plains, P. 93.

13 Crossing the Plains, P. 91.