John Edwin Cook
John Edwin Cook was one of John Brown's raiders who participated fully in his raid on Harpers Ferry.
Biography
He was the youngest of seven children of Nathaniel and Mary Cook, of Haddam, Connecticut. He attended classes at the Brainerd Academy and taught Sunday school at the Haddam Congregational Church. He began studying law at Yale College, but did not graduate. He worked as a law clerk for an attorney in Brooklyn, but did not stay long.According to Steven Lubet, his contact with abolitionism in [the United States|the abolitionist movement] began with his attending sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, a celebrity and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, based on Brooklyn. When the fighting of the Bleeding Kansas period broke out in the 1850s, he abandoned his law career and moved to Kansas. He participated in a lot of combat, but was perceived as "brave, conceited, and boastful".
Cook met John Brown in Kansas in 1856. He joined free-state militias, spent a winter in Lawrence and while he did not participate in the Pottawatomie massacre, he was with Brown on other expeditions. Brown saw that Cook could be exceptionally useful.
At Brown's suggestion, Cook went to Harpers Ferry in June 1858, renting a boardinghouse room under his own name. He worked as a lock tender, schoolteacher, private writing tutor, and peddlar. He impregnated his landlady's daughter, marrying her before the child was born. According to Lubet, he was "an honorable husband and a devoted father".sfn|Cook|1859sfn|Lubet|2012|p=133