Remembering A Patriot - Revolutionary soldier honored
By Dennis Rich - The Sedalia Democrat
May 27, 2007
Musket reports were answered by distant claps of thunder over the grave of Peter Cockrell on Saturday.
Cockrell, born in Northumberland County, Va. in 1758, was 18 years old when he enlisted in the Continental Army in the early days of the American Revolution. After his service, Cockrell and his wife, Sarah, moved to Kentucky, then to the Clear Creek township, south of Pilot Grove in Cooper County.
Members of the Hannah Cole and Sarah Polk chapters of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker here at what is believed to be the grave site of Cockrell and his wife in the Pleasant Green Methodist Church Cemetery. The DAR representatives were joined by 12 of the Revolutionary War soldier’s descendants and members of the public for the marker’s dedication ceremony.
One of his descendants, Linda Mansur, of Nashville, Tenn., said that Cockrell re-enlisted twice, and fought in a number of major battles before being captured by British soldiers at the Battle of Charleston, S.C. in May of 1780. He spent the remainder of the war on a British prison ship, the Repulse 64. After the Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the War for Independence, Cockrell was released and made his way back home.
He married Sarah in 1785, and the couple moved to Bourbon County, Kentucky, where their daughters married into the Walker, Boatman, Johnson, and Rubey families.
The families began arriving in Clear Creek between 1818 and 1824, where Cockrell took up trade as a farmer. Members of the Rubey family set aside an acre and a half of land for the church and cemetery. A Methodist church has continued to operate at the site since 1824.
Mansur said she and her mother, Betty, of Jefferson City, began doing research on the family for a book in 1998. “We didn’t fully understand or appreciate how family history truly draws us together,” Mansur told the crowd. She said that she hoped the memory of Cockrell would inspire others to “take pride in their country and remember the men and women who suffered and died for freedom.”
Mansur, who works as a marketing director for an accounting firm in Nashville, said that descendants had continued to work in agriculture, as well as business.
Janet [sic: Janett] Rowland Miller, the DAR’s state corresponding secretary for Missouri, said that Cockrell was among some 250 Revolutionary War soldiers who died in Missouri. She said that the former soldiers were drawn to Missouri by land grants as the young republic began to settle lands acquired through the Louisiana Purchase.