William Cocke
William Cocke (
September 6,
1747â€"
August 22,
1828) was an
American lawyer, pioneer, and statesman. He has the somewhat unique distinction of having served in the state legislature of four different states:
Virginia,
North Carolina,
Tennessee, and
Mississippi, and was the first
U.S. Senator for Tennessee.
William was born in
Amelia County, Virginia in 1747. He was the sixth of ten or eleven children of Abraham (c.1695â€"1760) and Mary (Batte) Cocke. William was educated at home before reading law. He was admitted to the
bar in Virginia and engaged in a limited law practice.
Cocke spent more time on the frontier than he did in a law office. He was involved in exploration in the company of
Daniel Boone, seeing much of what was to become eastern
Kentucky and
East Tennessee. He was elected a member of the
Virginia House of Burgesses and a
colonel of
militia; in 1776 he led four companies of that militia into to what became Tennessee for action against the
Indians. Later that year he left Virginia and moved to what was to become Tennessee. During the attempted organization of the
State of Franklin, Cocke was elected as the would-be state's delegate to the
Congress of the Confederation.
In 1796 Cocke was chosen to the convention that wrote the first Tennessee
state constitution. He was then elected to be one of the new
state's initial Senators. While his service in this office is often dated from the date of Tennessee statehood,
June 1,
1796, he in fact was sworn in and began his initial Senate service on
August 2,
1796. His initial term expired on
March 3,
1797.
However, the
Tennessee General Assembly initially neglected to elect a Senate successor to Cocke; he was subsequently appointed to the post in his former seat by
governor of Tennessee John Sevier on
April 22,
1797, until the General Assembly belatedly elected his successor,
Andrew Jackson. Later he was elected by the Tennessee Assembly to the other U.S. Senate seat, serving in it from
March 4,
1799 to
March 3,
1805.
Cocke was appointed a
judge of the First Judicial Circuit of Tennessee in 1809. He later resigned this position and moved to
Mississippi. There he was elected to the
state legislature in 1813. He returned to military duty in the
War of 1812, serving under Andrew Jackson. In 1814 he was appointed by
President James Madison to be Indian agent to the
Chickasaw nation; he died in
Columbus, Mississippi in 1818 and is buried there.
Cocke County, Tennessee is named in his honor. His son
John Cocke (1772â€"1854) was a four-term
U.S. Representative from Tennessee; his grandson
William Michael Cocke (1815â€"1896) was a two-term U.S. Representative from Tennessee.
*
Congressional Biography*
Find-A-Grave profile for William Cocke
