it. A few weeks ago Sharon posted (KOCH 1700's Immigrants)

several excellent pages calling attention to her recognition

that many of our early German ancestors, arriving over a

period of years, were related to each other.

Brothers followed brothers and parents followed children.

For some time I have believed that many Cooks were KOCHS and

didn't know it. I have found it true in my own family. Some

of us are fortunate to have been told of our Pennsylvania

Dutch (German) ancestry and to have been taught that the

spelling of our name has been changed.

HISTORY - Let us begin in the late 1600's. The German

Protestants, persecuted in their homeland, began leaving for

America. They quickly learned to avoid New York, where the

first ones had bad experience. The word went back "Go to

Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania you will be received fairly.

For 60 or 70 years, almost all Germans came to Pennsylvania

Colony. However, from the English perspective, these were

strange people, wearing strange clothing, speaking a strange

language, with strange customs. So the English officials

carefully took the names of the heads of families and then

encouraged them to settle out on the edge of civilization

where they would make an excellent buffer between

the more civilized citizens and the Indians. And they did.

And it also placed them where they had a head start on

moving to more land than anyone had yet ever dreamed about.

From generation to generation they would move. They defined

the frontier. Another group of people would soon join them,

the Protestant Scots from North Ireland, calling themselves

Scotch-Irish.

They were English-speaking but were not very fond of England.

When the time for revolution arrived both groups would become

excellent rebels.

GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY - Get out your atlas and look at

a relief map of the United States. This is the map that shows

only mountains and flat lands and rivers and streams. Look at

that big mountain chain running all of the way down the

eastern side of the United States, the Appalachians. Remember,

it was a wilderness. There was NO road leading west, just row

after row after row of mountains. The mountains ran north and

south. Therefore, if you traveled south you could walk between

the mountains, in the valleys where there was water in the

streams for you and your horse. Don't think about wagons yet.

It requires a road for a wheeled vehicle and that will have

to come later. At this point, we might as well mention

Indians. Up in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania and for

all of the length of the Ohio River there were the Shawnees

along with several other tribes. The Shawnees were at war with

the whites almost constantly for sixty or seventy years. Their

effective resistance to white expansion is an almost forgotten

story of early America, probably because of the small amount

of printed news in those days and because it took place on

the frontier where the settlers were, not in the cities where

the newspapers were. The later stories of Sitting Bull and

Gerinimo got a lot more ink because they came after the

invention of the telegraph and the steamboat and the railroad

train and the building of countless miles of road. The Shawnee

held back the white man for decades. The mountains and the

Shawnee discouraged most from going west. However there

was one ready-made trail in existance. It was the trail

leading down through the mountain valleys, called by the

Indians the Buffalo Trail.

War parties had used it for generations. Now the Germans used

it, some pausing in what we now call Cumberland, Franklin and

Adams Counties in Pennsylvania, then crossing Maryland Colony

and into Virginia Colony where they discovered the Shenandoah

Valley and there they settled down and began to prosper. And

this was where the young Geolf-brother, Lawrence, Lord

Fairfax and the governor of the Virginia Colony to survey and

find out what was in this part of their colony which they had

never yet explored. The Virginia English established

government, however they couldn't spell in German which

probably wasn't as important as it might seem because many

of the Germans probably couldn't spell in German either.

What is important is the number of land records and probate

records and court records that still exist showing the names

Koch and Cook and other records showing Cook with the

recorder's notation saying "signed in the German language"

meaning Koch. Also, there are the church records which were

kept by educated clergy who could write German

very well. Many of these records still exist. The Germans were

very practical, resilient and flexible people who would avoid

confusing an English official by agreeing that the name was

Cook. The important thing was to not jeopardise a land title

or the recording of an estate. In church the name was usually

Koch but,even there, it could be Cook.

Other matters required flexibility. Many of those

Protestant German boys and girls and a big bunch of those

Protestant Scotch-Irish boys and girls were making goo-goo

eyes at each other and many Germans were speaking two

languages. Also, it had become apparent that outsiders were

not confused when you signed your name as Cook as they

frequently were when you signed as Koch.

Where is this tale leading? Well, that Buffalo Trail

led right down to North Carolina and North Carolina is

bordered on the south by South Carolina and both of these

locations were starting points for moving across the Old

South. It also led to Tennessee which would supply many early

settlers for the Republic of Texas. However, if you went down

the Great Valley and then turned through the Cumberland Gap,

the only pass through those terrible mountains, there was the

one-horse-wide Wilderness Trail and you were in what would

become Kentucky. Remember, all of these earliest ancestors

made this rugged trip on Shank's Mare (walking). A few rode

horses but for most the horses had to be used to carry

supplies.

If you have traced your Cook ancestors back to one of

these states and if you know that they arrived by boat in

Maryland, Virginia or either of the Carolinas then they were

probably English. If you have traced your Cook ancestors back

to one of these states in the early 1800's and at that point

you don't know where to look next, pause and think about the

possibilities. They might have been German and the

spelling of their name may have been changed from Koch to

Cook. A Cook family certainly did not just pop up in North

Carolina, over-night, like a mushroom. It came from somewhere.

And there is one likely place of origin, Pennsylvania.

Look north up that Buffalo Trail in the Great Valley of the

Appalachians to the Shenando and the Blue Ridge. It will

require some time to investigate the Cooks and Kochs in

Shenandoah County and maybe to figure out who is Koch today

and Cook tomorrow. And then search on further up the Great

Valley to the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania and don't

ignore what is now the Pittsburgh area, for many Germans came

up from the Shenando and settled there while it was still

Virginia Colony (George Washington had two horses shot from

under him up there while fighting the French and Indians and

he was a Virginian). All of this takes time and effort but it

also took a lot of effort and perhaps a couple of generations

for those German Kochs to make that trip from Pennsylvania

down to the Carolinas or Tennessee and to get that name

changed from Koch to Cook. If you are lucky, maybe you will

find the spirit of a Koch ancestor up there saying

"Welcome to where your American roots began, but why did it

take you so long to learn to spell your name correctly?"

Incidently, I live in Texas, transplanted from

Indiana, and in the early 1770's, George Cook, my German,

Indian trader, third great grandfather bought Olithi, who

became my third great grandmother. She was one of those

Shawnees who held back Daniel Boone and all of those other

whites for so many decades so if your name is Cook and if you

have an old story in your family background about an Indian

ancestor from way back there, get in touch with me. You and

I just might be cousins.