Cook began his career in the military as an officer of Colored Troops with brevets of major & lt.colonel.
Contact Us About This Product
Description
CDV – Signed By George H. Cook, 19th US Infantry. “Geo. H. Cook / Adjt: 19th Infy.”
Cook began his career as a 1st Lieutenant in the 109th US Colored Infantry in July of 1864, then captain of the 8th U.S. Colored Artillery in February of 1865, with brevets of major and lieutenant colonel. He was commissioned a 2nd Lt. in the 28th U.S. Infantry in January of 1867, becoming in 1869 the 19th Infantry. 1st Lt. and adjutant in Oct. 1873 to 1882. Cook was promoted to captain, and quartermaster in Feb. 1882, and while stationed at Fort Slocum, New York Harbor. This excerpt is taken from (http://www.fortwiki.com/Fort_Slocum_(2)):
“But the tumbledown Civil War buildings were an eyesore and an embarrassment, especially as a place to welcome new recruits. A survey in 1878 by Col. David Sloane Stanley (1828-1902), followed by that of Maj. Samuel Nicholl Benjamin (1839-1886) in 1879, laid out a permanent post around a central parade field, and set in motion a program of construction whereby wooden and temporary structures would be replaced, gradually, by permanent brick structures. By the mid-1880 all the Civil War buildings had been removed and under QM Capt. George Hamilton Cook (1846-1889), the core of the new brick post began to be laid out around the parade field from 1886-1889. This core included an innovative consolidated mess (feeding the entire garrison, delivering food by trolley cart) and three barracks of Cook’s own design (and completely unique to Davids’ Island) the whole complex was bookended by mirror-image barracks built around octagonal towers. Cook, “the Christopher Wren of Davids’ Island,” also exploited an underground fresh-water aquifer to put in the first island-wide water system (including a monumental brick storage tower on the southeast), greatly improving sanitation in the process. Construction on this brick post would proceed in fits and starts of funding until, by about 1910, a permanent post was in place that would last until the very end.”
This image shows Cook as adjutant in the 19th Infantry. He died on 1889.
Photographed by Washburn, New Orleans (while in Reconstruction duty Circa 1870).
Fine condition.
