Townsend Pitt Cooke and Henry Dell Cooke

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In the eastern part of Sandusky's Oakland Cemetery is this simple cross monument, which honors the memory of Townsend Pitt Cooke and Henry Dell Cooke. These two men were sons of Pitt Cooke and Mary Elizabeth Townsend Cooke. Townsend Pitt Cooke was born in 1845. His occupation was bookkeeper at the Sloane House Hotel. He died on January 7, 1914 from heart disease. An article in the Van Wert Daily Bulletin, of January 8, 1914, stated that T. Pitt Cooke had been the favorite nephew of Jay Cooke, Civil War financier.

Henry Dell Cooke was born in 1850, and he died at the age of 71 on October 16, 1922, at the home of sister Mary E. Cooke on Wayne Street. H. Dell Cooke had been very active in Grace Episcopal Church, as a vestryman, Sunday School teacher, and choir member. He was a well respected real estate agent. This tribute from the obituary of H. Dell Cooke, which appeared in the  October 17, 1922 issue of the Sandusky Register stated: "Those who knew him the best, his friends and business associates, admired him for those rugged qualities of truth and honor which mark the Christian gentleman, and which were in such rare measure his."

As you view the Cooke monument from the back of the cross, you can clearly see Route 250 in Sandusky, which is the main route to Cedar Point, a very popular amusement park.

T. Pitt and H. Dell Cooke have roots going back to some of the earliest residents of the Firelands. Their paternal grandfather was Eleutheros Coooke, Sandusky's first lawyer, and their maternal grandfather was a prominent Sandusky businessman, William T. Townsend.