Tombstone Tuesday: The Cooks of Reddick Cemetery

REDDICK CEMETERY

Rush County, Indiana

MARTHA (BROWN) COOK 

July 17, 1819 - August 17, 1841

First wife of Giles Cook and my third maternal great grandmother

ELIZABETH ANN COOK
October 1, 1837 - September 24, 1840

Daugher of Giles and Martha (Brown) Cook, died before her 3rd birthday.

GILES COOK

b. circa 1809 - d. February 8, 1879

Janet Wallen, Reddick Cemetery

Giles' tombstone was noted in the early cemetery listing for Reddick Cemetery but the stone has been missing for many years and was certainly nowhere to be found when my mother and I visited this cemetery in 1999. While studying the area and poking around some, we discovered a stone completely sunken into the ground just inches away and almost directly in front of Martha's stone. I was so excited, I just knew this was the missing stone! We commenced to carefully unearthing the stone which took all of an hour and the ruination of a perfectly good pair of jeans. The stone weighed at least 40 to 50 lbs. and we had to lift it straight up. It was hard getting a grip on it but we finally managed. I was glad this was a secluded cemetery and no one was around to see us and think we were vandalizing! 


Once we got the stone lifted out and brushed off we could detect no writing anywhere on it, even after using a gallon of our drinking water to wash it off. How disappointing! Obviously, we had not found the tombstone of the elusive Giles Cook. We lowered the stone back into the crevice it came from and started heading back to the van. As we passed other graves I noticed a large tombstone that was being propped up by a smaller stone and when I looked closer the smaller brick size stone had the initials that appeared to be either "C.C." or "G.C.". I quickly took a photo of it and days later when I got home I looked through the listings for the cemetery. There was no one buried in the Reddick cemetery with the initials "C. C." and upon close inspection of the photo I could see a small indentation coming down from the bottom of the first C. making it a G! The only person buried in the Reddick cemetery with those initials was my maternal third great grandfather,  Giles Cook! 

Hallelujah! Better a foot stone than no stone at all!

Foot stone of Giles Cook, my maternal third great grandfather

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