An Elk River Boy made good

Remembering Barnabas Snow Cook

Unlike others mentioned in my column series about area frontiersmen in 1700s and early 1800s killed people. Some, like Lewis Wetzel, were born here. Some, like Peter McCune, came to farm. Some, like Adam O'Brien came to escape the constraints of civilized society and enjoy the mountain beauty. One, and a very important one he was, came because of a woman. Barnabas Snow Cook was born April 15, 1784 in Kennebec, Maine and was the descendant of Mayflower passengers. In 1806, he married Lydia Adams, whose previous husband had supposedly died at sea.

About 10 years later, Lydia suddenly formed a habit of taking long walks in the woods. Barnabas' curiousity was aroused and he followed her on a walk. Divorces were impossible in those days, but America was vast. He hitched up a wagon and left Lydia for Northwest Ohio, where he became an ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ.

He was sent as a missionary to the wilds of Central West Virginia and settled in Calhoun County, which was then part of Kanawha County. He served as Kanawha County Sheriff and Justice of the Peace. He was noted as a preacher who would perform a service for anyone who wanted married and county courthouses are strewn with his signature on marriage licenses. He was one of the first to preach the gospel in Calhoun County and built the county's first church.

He was preaching at Arnoldsburg as early as 1820. Calhoun County, at that time, was a very wild place, a wilderness. As justice of the peace, he presided over some odd cases. Perhaps the most interesting is when Daniel Coger and Timothy McCune appeared in court at Cook's home in 1841. Coger sold McCune his wife, yes his wife, for a deer hide. McCune took the wife, but failed to pay the deer hide. Cook listened to testimony from the litigants and witnesses and ruled that McCune could keep the wife, but had to pay the deer hide. About the time Cook moved to Arnoldsburg, he married Christinana McCune, who was the granddaughter of famous Indian fighter Adam OáBrien. She was also the daughter of Peter McCune, the first known settler of Calhoun County. O'Brien and Cook were apparently close friends. O'Brien's neighbor, Ephraim Bee, is documented as saying O'Brien resented the advance of civilization, especially the preachers, police and lawyers, but he did make one exception, for the Rev. Barnabas Snow Cook, who is my great, great, great, great grandfather and one of the founders of Calhoun County.

According to Bee, Cook wrote a hymn for when he was leaving the church (here is one verse of it): "So fare-ye-well Adam OáBrien and good-by Peter McCune, If one jump don't take us to heaven, light, and take a new jump from the moon." When Cook wrote the hymn, he was evidently moving to Amma, where he died in 1862. Before his death, however, Lydia tried to claim his War of 1812 pension of her "late" husband. She didn't get away with it. Cook went to Charleston and filed a deposition that he was very much alive.

Cook, by the way, is my great, great, great, great grandfather.