COOKE, JOHN (?-?). John Cooke was a partner of Isaac Hughes^qv as one of Stephen F. Austin's^qv Old Three Hundred^qv families. The two received title to a league and a labor of land now in Harris County on August 10, 1824. The census of March 1826 classified Cooke as a farmer and stock raiser, a single man aged between twenty-five and forty. At one time he served as a surveyor for the Coahuila and Texas^qv government. The ayuntamiento^qv of San Felipe de Austin, meeting on December 15, 1830, to examine titles granted to settlers in Austin's first colony, ruled that Cooke and Hughes had abandoned the country in 1826 without improving their land and that the titles were null and void.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin, 1828-1832," 12 parts, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 21-24 (January 1918-October 1920). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Virginia H. Taylor Houston, "Surveying in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 65 (October 1961). Texas Gazette, May 8, 1830.