John Philip Cook

In 1860 he was a 26 year old farmer at Douglasville in Cass County, TX. He enlisted on 6 June 1861 in New Orleans and mustered as a Private in Company D, First Texas Infantry.

He was with his company in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862 and later remembered:

We made the charge with the rest of the brigade ... and did not stop as long as there was a Yankee in sight. They ran through the cornfield and we had nearly gone through it when Colonel Work called a halt to reform our line and await the arrival of the balance of the brigade. While thus halted a Federal battery some 250 yards distant from us got our range and began making it hot for us. The boys wanted to charge and capture it, but Colonel Work objected.

We began firing at the men around the battery, and after we had given them a couple of rounds they abandoned their guns and took to flight. Just as they did so a body of Federals who lay behind a rock fence fifty yards away, and partly hidden from our view by the standing corn, poured a volley into us. Turning our eyes in this direction, we began firing at them, taking the precaution however, to lie down and do our shooting ... within five minutes not a stalk of corn was left standing between us and the rock fence. But we stayed there and continued the fight until most of our men were killed or wounded, and then, ordered to retire, fell back ... Of my company only Captain Connally and myself were left.

While ramming the thirty-fourth cartridge down my gun it stuck about half way. Just then the order to fall back came, and having no time to tinker with a choked gun I picked up that of one of my wounded comrades ... I found a comrade named Dixon [Dickson] – we called him Dixie – lying down and severely wounded. He asked me to help him off the field, and I did, and although for 150 yards the air was full of lead fired at us by the Yankees, neither of us got scratched ...

He was in hospitals in Richmond and Farmville, VA with chronic rheumatism to 29 December 1862, then returned to duty. He was furloughed from a Richmond, VA hospital on 16 September 1864 and sent to Granville, AL. He was paroled in Montgomery, AL on 6 June 1865.

By 1870 he was again a successful farmer in Cass County, TX. In 1880 he was farming in Karnes County but by 1900 was a merchant in Gillespie County, TX. He had retired there in 1910 but was back to work in 1920, cobbling shoes, then age 85. He lived to be 95 years old.

Service information from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. The quote above from the San Antonio Daily Express of 29 March 1908. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1920. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Grace Ann Reid (1836-1891) in Alabama in January 1865 and they had 6 children between 1867 and 1886, all born in Texas.

01/10/1834; Coweta County, GA

06/22/1929; Harper, TX; burial in Harper Community Cemetery, Harper, TX