Major William Cooke

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the state of Texas itself saw fit to erect a marker for this man back in 1936, so you know the story carries some weight. Major William Cooke.

Born in Virginia, March 28, 1808. That's your beginning. A Virginia boy, with a date and a name, and whatever road lay ahead of him.

And that road, as roads in Texas tend to do, led somewhere nobody plans for. He made it to Texas, to Guadalupe County, and that is where his story closed. December 21, 1847.

The marker gives us two dates, a birthplace, and a place of dying, and sometimes that's the whole frame a life gets. Virginia to Guadalupe County, 1808 to 1847. Major William Cooke.

Texas remembered him. That's not nothing.

What the marker says

Born in Virginia, March 28, 1808 - Died in Guadalupe County, Texas December 21, 1847 Erected by the State of Texas 1936