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Cape Girardeau
Term of Service at the Supreme Court of Missouri: November 1820 - May 1823
Judge John Dillard Cook was born in 1792 in Virginia.[i] At the age of seven, Cook and his family moved from Virginia to Kentucky.[ii] In Kentucky, Cook worked on his father’s farm and began his study of law.[iii] At 22, he joined the law office of General Talbert, a prominent lawyer in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he studied as an apprentice.[iv] He remained there, as a student, until his admittance to the bar in Franklin County, Kentucky, in March 1814.[v] Cook arrived in Missouri in 1816 and established a law practice in Ste. Genevieve County.[vi] He was elected a member of the Territorial Council of Missouri two years later, in 1818.[vii] Cook’s role as a public servant continued when he was selected by the people of Ste. Genevieve County as a delegate to the state convention, when Missouri’s first constitution was drafted and adopted in July 1820. [viii]
Governor Alexander McNair appointed Cook as one of the first judges of the Supreme Court of Missouri on November 16, 1820.[ix] Judge Cook authored the first opinion of the Court published in the Missouri Reports.[x] After officially beginning his service with the Court during the March term in 1821,[xi] Judge Cook resigned from the Court in May 1823.[xii] Governor McNair reappointed Cook to the Supreme Court of Missouri, two times after his service, and both times Cook declined.[xiii]
Cook later accepted the position of circuit judge in the Tenth Judicial Circuit in 1823.[xiv] Judge Cook served as a circuit judge in the Tenth Judicial Circuit (southeastern Missouri), from 1823-1848, living in Cape Girardeau during that time.[xv] Judge Cook assisted with the expansion of courts in southeastern Missouri, which began with Stoddard County in 1836, and Mississippi and Dunklin Counties in 1845.[xvi] After Judge Cook’s resignation in 1848, he served as United States district attorney for eastern Missouri from 1848-1850.[xvii]
Judge John Dillard Cook died in 1852 in Cape Girardeau.[xviii]
[i] “1850 United States Federal Census.” Information courtesy of Ancestry.com, accessed October 2017, available from https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/. E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” 325 Missouri Reports 1930, iii.
[ii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[iii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[iv] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[v] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[vi] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[vii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii.
[viii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iii. William E. Parrish, Charles T. Jones, Jr., and Lawrence O. Christensen, Missouri: Heart of the Nation. 3rd edition. (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2004), 57.
[ix] Buel Leopard, Floyd C. Shoemaker, eds., The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri, (Columbia, MO: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1922), 46.
[x] E. W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xi] Louis Houck, ed., Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, from 1821 to 1827 (Cape Girardeau, MO: Kimball & Taylor, Printers, 1870), 2.
[xii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv. See also St. Louis Missouri Republican, Wednesday, May 28, 1823, page 2, column 5. Information courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri-Columbia Newspaper Database, accessed June 2017, available from http://shsmo.org/newspaper/.
[xiii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xiv] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xv] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xvi] E. W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xvii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
[xviii] E.W. Stephens, “Memorial to Judge John D. Cook. Remarks of Hon. George Munger,” iv.
Biographical information authored by Mr. Matt Orf, 2017, University of Missouri-Columbia.