John Hartwell Cocke

John Hartwell Cocke II was born on September 19, 1780, at the Mount Pleasant plantation in Surry County, Virginia.[3] With the exception of his younger brother Robert Kennon Cocke, who died in 1790, John was the only son of eight children born to John Hartwell Cocke I and Elizabeth Kennon Cocke. Through an entirely paternal line Cocke was a direct descendant of English politician Henry Cocke.[4] The elder Cocke had married Elizabeth Kennon, who grew up on her parents' plantation named Mount Pleasant, in Chesterfield County, Virginia. He became a colonel in the American Revolution. The younger Cocke was orphaned by the age of twelve; he inherited his father's plantation and slaves, which he took over after coming of age.

At the age of fourteen, Cocke enrolled at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he stayed at the home of Colonel Champion Travis.[3] Cocke graduated as part of the class of 1798.[5] Upon his twenty-first birthday in 1801, he legally inherited the Mount Pleasant plantation.[6]

Cocke married Anne Blaus (or Blaws) Barraud in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 25, 1802. Her father, Philip Barraud, was a physician who practiced medicine in Williamsburg, where Cocke had studied. Anne stayed in Norfolk until March 1803, while Cocke renovated the plantation home in Surry County.[3] The Cockes had a son, John Hartwell, in 1804 and a daughter, Louisiana Barraud, in 1806 at Mount Pleasant.

In 1809, Cocke sold the plantation to his sister Sally and her husband Nicholas Faulcon. He moved with his family to Bremo Plantation, which he had built on the northern bank of the James River in Fluvanna County in the Piedmont. His wife gave birth at Bremo to another son, Philip St. George, in 1809 and another daughter, Ann Blaus, in 1811.[3]

Map of the Chickahominy River (highlighted)

During the War of 1812, Cocke was commissioned as a brigadier general in command of the Virginia militia based out of Camp Carter and Camp Holly.[5] His brigade was composed of companies of troops from Fluvanna County.[7] From 1812 to 1813, Cocke led the defense of Richmond, Virginia along the Chickahominy River against British forces.[8]

Cocke was noted for being a distinguished officer;[9] the strict discipline he enforced upon insubordinate soldiers was compared to that of Baron von Steuben.[7] Cocke rode a bay stallion named Roebuck during the war.[10]

Bremo Mansion

After the war, Cocke returned to his estate at Bremo, where his wife had another son, Cary Charles, born in 1814.[6] Cocke's wife Anne died in December 1816, a few months after the birth of their youngest daughter, Sally Faulcon. Anne was buried at Bremo Recess.[11]

In 1819, Cocke completed construction of a large plantation mansion at Upper Bremo with the master builder John Neilson, who had worked with Thomas Jefferson on Monticello.[12] That year, Cocke was appointed by Virginia governor James Patton Preston to the first Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia. By the time Cocke retired from the board in 1852, annual enrollment at the university had reached 400 students.[2]

In 1835, Cocke joined the board of directors of the James River and Kanawha Company, which was established to develop canals to improve water transportation along 200 miles (320 km) of the James River.[2] The river traffic became an important part of the local economy in the following decades, but a series of floods and the American Civil War brought an end to this era.[13]

A devout Christian, Cocke participated in several efforts to reform different aspects of society, including temperance and gradual emancipation. Cocke inherited a number of slaves and also was an important player in Virginia's domestic slave trade, helping professors at the University of Virginia buy slaves and renting slaves to the institution.[14] Cocke expressed "continual hostility to slavery" and promoted using "education and skill training" to prepare slaves for freedom and colonization in Africa; as a result, he was once violently attacked by a pro-slavery neighbor.[15] By 1848, Cocke started a second plantation in Alabama as a place for slaves to prepare to colonize Liberia. Though it was unpopular with abolitionists and the black population in general in the United States, he supported the colonization project by sending books and supplies over the years.[16] In 1855, Cocke traded his mansion for the smaller home of his son Cary Charles on the plantation, where he retired for the remainder of his years.[17]

Bremo Slave Chapel

John Hartwell Cocke's son Philip St. George Cocke was commissioned as a colonel in the Confederate States Army, commanding troops at the Battle of Blackburn's Ford and the First Battle of Bull Run. Promoted to brigadier general in 1861, he committed suicide that year before Christmas. He was described as "excitable" and "eccentric," but no one really understood what made him take such action.[18]

In 1881, John's last surviving son, Dr. Cary Charles Cocke, along with William Cocke and Charles E. Cosby, purchased land nearby in Bremo Bluff to relocate a chapel which John Hartwell Cocke had built for his slaves on the plantation.[19] Consecrated as part of an Episcopal Church, the Bremo Slave Chapel was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 1979 and the National Register of Historic Places in March 1980.[20] Cocke's plantation was declared a National Historic Landmark as Bremo Historic District in November 1971.[21] He also designed Glen Burnie near Palmyra, Virginia and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.[22]