Death of Judge Gustave Cook

Confederate Veteran
Volume 5, Number 8, Page 418
August, 1897

DEATH OF JUDGE GUSTAVE COOK.

One of the sad announcements that came as the July VETERAN was sent to press was that Judge Gustave Cook, last colonel of Terry's Texas Rangers, was dead. Many thousands who read the June VETERAN must have had stirred in them the profoundest sympathy in reading his letter, in which he said: "My picture flatters me very much now, for I am in very weak health, quite thin, and am getting very white. I have been confined to bed and room for nearly seven months. I hope to get well, but am prepared for the result, whatever it may be. God bless my old comrades!"

THE LATE JUDGE GUSTAVE COOK.

Many a reader of the VETERAN who read the personal sketch of Col. Gustave Cook, of Texas, will read with more pathetic interest the following:

At a meeting of P. C. Woods Camp No. 609, U. C. V., held at San Marcos, Tex., on July 23, 1897, the following resolutions were adopted:

Resolved, That in the death of Col. Gustave Cook another hero of the gray has gone to join the silent majority; and that, while his great services to his country were unrequited here, we believe that in the great beyond he will meet his reward.

That the story of this brave man's life is a precious heritage to his family, in which we, his comrades, share, and that it shall be our highest duty to keep his memory green and his fame unsullied.

That, as a mark of respect to our dead comrade, the usual badge of mourning shall be worn by the members of this camp for the period of thirty days, and that a copy of these resolutions be furnished the family.

Judge Cook had two brothers who were captains in the Confederate army. Walter, the elder, was killed at Chancellorsville; the other served in Rhodes's Brigade. They were all reared in Alabama, Gustave going to Texas when fifteen years old, without friend or relative to take an interest in him. He grew up among Texans, "imbibing their spirit and daring." He married at eighteen years of age, and was elected County Judge at twenty-one. In 1861 he enlisted as a private soldier, and was promoted successively to be sergeant, captain, major, lieutenant-colonel, and colonel. He joined Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston at Bowling Green, Ky., and remained with the Army of Tennessee up to the surrender, in 1865. He was in over two hundred engagements, among them Woodsonville, Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Resaca, Marietta, Atlanta, Smithville (N.C.), and Bentonville (N.C.). At Shiloh his right leg was broken by a musket-ball; at Farmington, Tenn., he was shot through the right arm and received a shot through the right hand, which fractured every bone in it; at Buck Head Church, Ga., he was wounded by a Mini ball through the right ankle, and at Bentonville he was shot through the right shoulder, the ball lodging in the rear of the lungs. He had voted for secession, and offered his life to secure it.

The reunion of the survivors of Terry's Texas Rangers, which took plaice at Nashville in June, calls to memory the names of a few Rangers under Gen. Hood, known as Shannon's Scouts, and left by him at Atlanta when he started on his Nashville campaign in 1864. Our orders were to harass and punish the enemy at every chance, and that duty was well performed. From the time Sherman left Atlanta until Johnston's surrender we killed or captured over twelve hundred Federals, and fully half were killed, as Gen. Joe Wheeler and many survivors of the Scout's would testify. We also captured over one thousand horses and mules and destroyed three hundred wagons. I recall the following members of Terry's Rangers: Capt. A. M. Shannon, Felix Kennedy, Lon Compton, Coon Dunmon, William Kyle, C. Barnett, Tom Burney, Sam Mavic, Emit Lynch, Bill Lynch, Carter Walker, Joe Rogers, W. H. Smith, Dick Oliver, W. E. Moore. John Hogerty and Dick Pinkney were of the Fourth Texas; Homer Barnes, Evan Walker, of Georgia; while a few of them were of the Eleventh Texas Cavalry. Our last fight was made after Johnston's surrender, and we lost one of our best and bravest men when Emit Lynch was killed not far from Chapel Hill, N. C. The Scouts at no time had over twenty-five men for duty.

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[Note: There is a Carter A. Walker listed as Confederate Cavalry on the NPS roster, who belonged to 3rd Regiment, North Carolina Cavalry. There is no record of Carter Walker in the 8th TX Cav.]

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