| |
My Paternal
Side: The Cockrill family goes back to Scotland, from which I think they came
to America in the 17th century. There were no Cockrills on the Mayflower, but I
think that the first of them came soon after. May have been on the ship that
landed at Darien, South Carolina, in 1626.
The
first ancestor that I have a record of was Anderson Cockrill. He married and he
had a son that was named William. The name William follows down the family
line. This William married and he became the father of a son that he named
after his father, Anderson. This Anderson Cockrill married a girl named Lucy
Davenport Venable. Her father having been with General Greene at the Battle of
Cow Pens in the Revolutionary War. That marriage gives all of us Cockrill
descendants eligibility to membership in the Society of the Sons and Daughters
of the American Revolution. Lucy Davenport was a daughter of Joseph
Venable.
This Anderson Cockrill and Lucy Davenport
Cockrill brought several children into the world, four sons and some daughters.
The sons were named James, William, Zachery and Larkin Davenport Cockrill. One
of the daughters of the William Cockrill married a man by name of Beaver. They
had a son that they named David. He and James Cockrill came to California in
1849 and settled in what became the City of Santa Rosa in Sonoma Co., Calif.
They built the first brick building on Main St. near the Court House and it
went down in the Earthquake on April 18th, 1906. There is a beautiful residence
street named Beaver St. there to honor his name.
Back to Larkin Davenport Cockrill: He was born Jan. 4th,
1800 in Spartanburg, South Carolina and at the age of 3 years his family came
to Kentucky, where he was educated and was married to Didamia Stamps, a local
girl with whom he had fallen in love. There they became the parents of
Elizabeth Lorina, Helen Maria, Theodore Guvarus, Olivia Goldsmith, Rebecca and
William Cockrill. They then moved to Red Dirt, Bates County, Missouri where Ida
Josephine, Robert Lafayette and Bruce Travis Cockrill were born. There he
became a Circuit Judge, an office which he held until 1853 when with thousands
of others, wagon trains to California, locating at the head of Big Valley, in
Sonoma County a mile north of the Marin County line. He built the first house
right where the Town that built up there was named Bloomfield. There was a home
two miles northwest of another one half a mile South East. The following year,
1854, he was appointed Justice of Analy Township in which Sebastopol and
Forestville is also located. He held this office until his death in 1888 after
which his son Bruce Travis was appointed and held the office for several terms
until he became a physician and surgeon and resigned the office to a man in
Sebastopol. Larkin Davenport Cockrill was the first school teacher in
Bloomfield also.
His three brothers located in
different sections of California. James left Santa Rosa and took over several
thousand acres of land West of Salinas in Monterey County and he and his sons
Bruce and Charles raised cattle by the thousands on the ranch extending from
the town of Soledad towards the coast. They married and there are descendants
in that section of the State. William and Zachary located in upper Sonoma and
Mendocino Counties and married and their children and grandchildren are well
known for prominent offices and public works. The children of Larkin Davenport
Cockrill and his wife, ten in number, all married except a son named William.
He died in boyhood and like most of the family for four generations, are buried
in the old Bloomfield Cemetery. The oldest child, Elizabeth Lorine married
Obediah H. Hoag and later moved to Santa Rosa where two daughters and one son
are still living in the old home over 100 years old. Helen Maria married
William D. Lake and they had four children, three dying in childhood and the
other, Grace Edina married Walter Lloyd. They have one still living and owning
most all of the town of Bloomfield now. Lloyd died years ago but Grace, now
past 92 years of age and the son, Lake Lloyd, still are living.
The next child, Eliseth, married Stephen Fowler, a
native of New York and they had two sons. William and Edgar James and they both
lived to marry and became fathers of sons and daughters. William married an
Alameda girls and they had two boys and a girl. I think the girl has died a few
years ago, being married and I think had some children. I do not know what has
become of the second son Howard, but the first son Charles was a physician and
surgeon here in Oakland for many years and is now practicing in Santa Cruz.
Edgar James married Delia Rtan of Montana and they were the parents of three
children, two girls and a boy. The girls became registered nurses. Ada, the
oldest, married Dr. Bowles of Oakland and they were the parents of two sons
that are practicing medicine here in Oakland. Ada and the Senior Dr. Bowles
were gone years ago. Rthel [?], the youngest girl
was a nurse in Santa Rosa for many years. She never married and has passed away
also. The son, William, married a Miss Fouts, a girl from the Windsor section
near Santa Rosa. They had one child, a girl. William died years ago but I think
the wife may still be living and I know nothing about the daughter. Theordore
moved to San Francisco in the Sixties and in 1874, 5 and 6 was Chief of Police
of San Francisco. He married and there were a son and a daughter. The son
Harry, became an actor and followed it all of his life. His wife was an Actress
and there was no children. They finally got to Hollywood and were on the stage
and screen for many years until death took them. Theodore lost his first wife
and remarried again and there was one daughter by that marriage and she is
still alive in San Francisco. Her name is Ellie M. Cockrill, never having
married so far as we know. The daughter by the first wife married John Dressler
and they had several children. All have been dead for years except a daughter
named Doris. She married a man named Irwin and they live in Sacramento. He is
with Greyhound Bus Co. I made a mistake, there is a son left whose name is
Edward Dressler and he is in Sacramento and is also with the Greyhound
Co.
Olivia Goldsmith Cockrill married John
McReynolds and died six months after the birth of a son named Henry. The father
and son left with thereafter [?] in 1885 when they
went to Umatilla [a county in Oregon] that section
homesteaded and became wealthy and they were bankers in Pendleton, the County
Seat of Umatilla Co. Henry McReynolds grew up and married there and left a
daughter named Maude Gilbert in Pilot Rock, Umatilla Co., Ore. and she has
children and grandchildren.
Rebecca married Lewis
Miller and they had two sons, George and Fred. George died in young manhood and
sleeps in Bloomfield Cemetery, where his father and mother do also. Fred
married a Santa Rosa girl. They had one child, a girl born to them. She was
named Helen and she married a man named Walton and they had a son born to them
and were later divorced in San Rafael. The son grew to manhood, served in World
War 2 is now an Attorney practicing in San Rafael. His mother has died as his
grandparents. Next is Robert Lafayette Cockrill. He was Police Sergeant for
many years and was stationed at First and Brannan Sts. where the Pacific Mail
ships that run to Chile and to the Orient. The British Ships, the Occidental
and Oriental Line docked at these piers also. Sergeant Cockrill married a Hoag
girl. They had a son born to them, but he died as a baby and is buried in
Petaluma and I think its father and mother both sleep there. I know they have
died years ago.
Now comes the last of the Larkin
Davenport Cockrill family and the one that is my direct ancestor, Bruce Travis
Cockrill that was born in Bates County, Missouri in 1852 and was a year and a
half of when he reached Bloomfield in 1853. He lived to be married to Martha
Diantha Bellingham on June 26, 1876. They came to be the parents of 10
children, 7 boys and 3 girls, one girl named Ella died in babyhood. All of the
rest living to middle life or longer. William Aaron Cockrill, my grandfather
was the first child and two other brothers, Obe Anson and George Bellingham
Cockrill also still living and they reside in Santa Rosa. William Aaron is an
Attorney and lives in Oakland and has lived there for the past 38 years. My
father [crossed out with "son"], Wilbert Donald Cockrill was born in Bloomfield and
is now and has been for years resided in Oakland. The next child was a son
named Homer Travis Cockrill and he is married and they have a daughter,
Patricia Aileen and a son named Bruce Travis, after his great grandfather on
the Cockrill side. Their mother was and is Florence Benson. Her father, Alex
Benson, lives with them but her mother has been dead years ago.
My grandmother on my father's side is still alive and
lives a short distance from us, with our grandfather, William A. Cockrill. Her
maiden name was Lulu Ida Colburn. and she was born in San Francisco. We will
tell what we know about her ancestors as soon as we finish with father's side.
There was a General Cockrill in the War of 1812, but we have not completed his
ancestry. There was also a Captain Davenport, whom the city by that name is in
Iowa and we are trying to trace his ancestry as the name is so many times in
our ancestry of descendants. One of Grandfather Cockrill's nephew is named
Larkin Davenport Cockrill and he was a son named Larkin David Cockrill. To
grandfather's brother, twins and the last of the ten are or were Bruce Larkin
and Logen Davenport. They have passed on. There are 14 or more with the same
generation as mine and as I have gone into the subject so far will not name
them at this [time?].
We will now take up the maternal side of my grandfather,
which is the Bellingham family. This family I have a record back a thousand
years. They were of English nationality and were big business people situated
in Northumberland County, on the line with Scotland. In the 15th Century I
think it was, they furnished the ship and financed Captain Vancouver for his
Exploration of the American Northwest. In exploring what is now Puget Sound he
discovered a Bay now in the State of Washington and in honor of the people that
financed him, he named it Bellingham Bay and later when the City was built on
its shore it was given the name of Bellingham also. The large island that was
found was named Vancouver Island as well as the great city in British Columbia
and another city in Washington across from Portland, Oregon. Years
[?] the Bellinghams moved to Derry County, North
Ireland. There they built a large castle in the suburbs of Londonderry, the
County Seat of Derry County. There is where Aaron Bellingham and his two
brothers, Robert and Stephen were born. That branch migrated to Canada when
Aaron Bellingham was 7 years old. Stephen married and fathered a family in the
Fenlon Falls section near Lake Cameron. One of his daughters is living and she
has three generations in Canada. Two daughters never married. Robert came to
the United States and fought with the North in the Civil War. His descendants
are living in the Los Angeles section. Aaron married Clemenza Redmond and came
to California in 1867 and best [?] daughter
[?] Bloomfield. [?]
married Bruce Travis Cockrill as previously mentioned and who was my great
grandfather. They had another daughter named Margaret and she married a man
named Willis Middagh. They had two boys and a girl. Her younger brother and two
sons [of] her own live in Los Angeles
also.
|
|
