Cooke, Elisha, active 1745-1799

Elisha Cooke was born in Kingston near Plymouth, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1716 or 1717. Descended from voyagers on the original Mayflower, Cooke worked as a farmer in Kingston, Massachusetts until he moved to Sussex County, New Jersey in 1747. He married Rebecca Edgerton (d. after 1766) in 1741 with whom he had sixteen children: William, Hulday, Consider, Rebecah, Levi, Tabitha, Experience, Rebecah, Abner, Hannah, Phebe, Miriam, Lydia, Simeon, Elisha, Daniel. After the death of his first wife, Elisha Cooke married Sarah Jackson Doty (d. 1784) and with her had two more children: James and Mary. After Sarah's death, Cooke married again, this time to a woman named Abigail. Elisha Cooke died in 1799 at the age of eighty-four.