HENRY COOK

Sacramento County

Biographies

HENRY COOK

HENRY COOK was born in Schleswig-Holstein, December 15, 1822, his parents being Peter and Mary Cook. Receiving an ordinary education he went to sea at the age of fifteen and served in various capacities as a sailor boy until the age of twenty. He then learned the trade of ship-carpenter and made many voyages in that capacity for nine years, among others to India and China three times. In his earlier seafaring life he visited England several times. In the fourteen years that he spent on the sea he has been in nearly all the great seaports and in a large number of the minor ones. In one of those voyages from Europe he came around Cape Horn to California in 1854, arriving in San Francisco on June 10. He went to trading on the Sacramento River and around the bay for about two years, being half-owner of a trading sloop of thirty-two tons. In 1856 he sold out his interest in the sloop and went to Tuolumne County, where he took up some land, in partnership with his brother, Peter, and there remained about eighteen months. October 6, 1858, he came down to the Sacramento River and bought 200 acres on Grand Island, of which eight or ten were bank land and the rest tule. He was flooded out in 1862, but being an old sailor he “would not give up the ship.” In 1865 Mr. Cook paid a visit to his native land, remaining four months, and was there married, in August, to Miss Christina Cartensen, a native of Germany. Returning with his wife to Grand Island, he had the great misfortune to lose her after a few years. She died Febraury 2, 1869, leaving two children: Peter, born June 6, 1866; John W., born October 6, 1867. The older boy died in 1876, leaving Mr. Cook with only one child. John W., besides the usual district-school education, took a course in 1886 in Heald’s Business College in San Francisco. In 1872 Mr. Cook sold his place on Grand Island and bought the ranch of eighty-eight acres he now owns on Sutter Island. He first did a dairy business with fourteen cows, but in 1878 he began to plant an orchard. Struck by the flood of that season before they had rooted, he went around in his boat and took up the 1,000 trees he had just set out, stored them away until the flood subsided and replanted them. He has now about fifteen acres in orchard, and the remainder is tule land. October 2, 1883, Mr. Cook was again married, in San Francisco, to Mrs. Sophia (Puls) Bergholt, a native of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, born August 17, 1837, daughter of Johann and Sophia (Peto) Puls. The residence of Mr. And Mrs. Cook is a very neat and commodious one, well supplied with the conveniences and comforts of a home, and with an exceptionally fine flower-garden in front, exhibiting internally and externally the excellent taste of Mrs. Cook, and her instinctive compliance with that excellent commandment —make home beautiful.

Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.

Davis, Hon. Win. J., An Illustrated History of Sacramento County, California. Page 690. Lewis Publishing Company. 1890.