This is a page about Wendell doctor, postmaster, justice of the peace, and farmer Lucius Cook.  The status of this page is SOLIDIFYING.

Lucius Cook (1814-1857):

ref. to Lucius Cook in The New England Farmer (1853)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

interesting that the Mass. State Board of Agriculture was formed the year before (1852)

from Amherst genealogical records:

• parents were James and Martha Cook
• siblings were Celina (b. 1811), Ira (b. 1812), and Moody (b. 1916)
• Lucius was born Oct. 8, 1814 in Amherst
• “physician at Wendell”
• married to Fidelia Hayward on Aug. 19, 1840 in Shutesbury

there are two James Cooks in New Salem in the 1771 Mass. tax valuation, both of them quite prosperous (one very much so) – was this possibly Lucius’s family, and did they move down to the valley from the uplands at some point?
there are also quite a few Cooks in Hadley in 1771 (but then, it’s quite a common name)

a James Cook m. Martha Moodey in Pelham, March 1, 1810

635 – Edward Payson (Rust, I think), s. Charles & Celinda (Backus), March 3, 1845, at West Amh., lived in 1850, adopted by Lucius Cook of Wendell. [JAS]
in the 1865 Mass. census Edward is living in Worthington with:

• Oscar R Cushman 29 (farmer)
• Dianthe L Cushman 28 (farmer’s wife)
• Amelia R Cushman 66 (housework)
• Edward P Rust 20 (farmer)

in the 1880 U.S. Census:

• he’s 35, living in Brattleboro and working for an organ shop (Estey’s, presumably)
• he’s married to a woman named Fanny who is 8 years older than he is (43), and also from Mass.

in the 1900 U.S. Census, the couple is living in Mansfield, MA (Bristol County) (Ancestry thinks their name is “Ract”)

• he’s working as a Railroad flagman in 1900

he appears in the 1913 Amherst directory as “Woodcarver”
so, an interesting case of someone going between agricultural, artisanal, and industrial kinds of work

it looks as though Lucius was Wendell’s first postmaster, from 1841-46

from 1850 U.S. Census:

• Lucius Cook, 35 (so born abt 1815), physician, owned property worth $1250, b. Mass.
• wife Fidelia H., 34, b. Mass.
• female (servant, presumably) Alfreda Blodgett, 16, b. Mass.
• Edward P. Cook, 5, b. Mass.

from his death record (1857):

• Lucius Cook, b. Oct. 9, 1814, in Amherst
• married Nov. 30, 1837, in Pelham by Rev. J. Bent to Fidelia Hayward of Plainfield
• he died Oct. 9, 1857 in Erving
• Remarks: “Physician at Wendell”
• parents: James and Martha Cook

Fidelia was born April 10, 1816 in Plainfield

• her parents were Stephen and Jenet (from birth records, Plainfield)
• died 1897 at 81 of “senile asthenia” at home in Plainfield
• parents listed as Stephen Hayward of Concord, Mass. and Jenette Bisbee of Plainfield
• she was a poet and editor who published some of Emily Dickinson’s work in the Springfield Republican, where she was literary editor – see Judith Scholes, “Emily Dickinson and Fidelia Hayward Cooke’s Springfield Republican” in The Emily Dickinson Journal, Volume 23, Number 1, 2014, pp. 1-31

here’s a memorial to Dr. Cook in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Volume 59

 

 

 

 

 

 

from Franklin District Medical Society records:

Dr. Lucius Cook commenced practice in Wendell, Franklin Co., about 1840. He is believed to have been from Amherst, Hampshire Co., and was considered eminent both as a physician and surgeon. Some years after his settlement at Wendell he removed to Miller’s Falls, where he continued to reside until his death, about 1858, at the probable age of fifty-five to sixty years. He left no children. He is remembered as a stoutly-built and very corpulent man. He was something of a pettifogger in the law, and held the office of justice of the peace for several years.

(text also found here)

searching for him in the records of the Harvard Medical School…
Harvard University. Catalogue of the officers and students of the University in Cambridge, for the acadmical year 1839-40. (Cambridge [Mass.], 1839) Page 12.

Cambridge [Mass.]: :Folsom, Wells, and Thurston, printers to the University., 1840.
at American Antiquarian Society

from Greenfield Gazette and Courier, Oct. 18, 1902 (via Newspaper Archive):

“The Goldthwaite homestead, better known perhaps as the Dr. Lucius Cook place, has been sold. It Is said the purchaser plans to move the house off and build a hotel on the site.”