4 September 2006
My Dad has recovered from surgery after a long trial. He has been talking more about his past more than he ever has before, at least to me. He was telling me about his grandfather.
John Cook (Koch), was born in Germany, probabably about 1850. He served in the Prussian army before coming to America with his wife. Their first child, Helena, my grandmother, was born in New York city in 1880 and came to Watertown at the age of four. John worked at Lewandos in Watertown square as a master dyer, my Uncle John says that he was the owner for a short time although I am not sure how he would have come to own it or how he would have lost ownership. He had a son Phillip whom I remember from my childhood as Uncle Philly,who owned a cottage in Hampton Beach and also owned my current house where we Maloneys grew up on 15 Dana Terrace. He also had another daughter, Barbara, who married and had two sons, John would never talk to her again or acknowledge her existence because her husband was Jewish, and their sons were raised as Jews. My father remembers they always came to family events like funerals and remembers that they were friendly; he would talk to them but could not tell his mother that he had. John’s wife left him for another man after they had eight children together. She had a son with the new husband. John lived near Newton corner off of Galen street, my grandmother used to serve him breakfast, which he would refuse to touch until she put a beer on the table to go with the meal. My grandmother was living in Watertown square when she met my grandfather who was a mail man and a volunteer firefighter. My grandfather Thomas was born in 1878 and died when I was a child. He is buried in Saint Patrick’s cemetary in Watertown. His father James was born in County Mayo Ireland in 1858.
One of my earliest memories is of my father’s aunt another of John’s daughters and her husband. They lived off of Watertown square across River Street. I remember going there, and I remember them as a friendly old couple with flower gardens around their house. Strangely, one of my father’s earliest memories is also of this same couple in that same house a generation earlier.
Some of the traits ascribed to John Cook are familiar traits of the Maloney family; such as severity and stubbornness. I remember visits to my grandmother’s house on Green street. Everyone, including the children sat around the living room with the backs of their chairs against the wall, my grandmother in her rocker by the window.