Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1877 — The Fighting McCooks. [ARTICLE]

The Fighting McCooks.

A monument to Gen. Robert Latimer McCook, one of the famous fighting family of McCooks, has just been unveiled in one of the Cincinnati parks. jGen. McCook was a lawyer in Cincinnati at the outbreak of the war, and partner of Judge Stallo, a leading German. A few days after Lincoln’s first call for troops he, with his partner, addressed the Germans. A number of them organized the Ninth regiment and elected him Colonel. He was promoted to Brigadier General for good management and gallant conduct at Mill Spring, but, on Aug. 5, 1862, while lying sick in an open carriage, his regiment being on the march from Athens, Ala., to Tennessee, and he three miles in advance with an escort, was surrounded by a band of guerrillas and shot, dying the next day. Capt. Frank Gurley, his murderer, was subsequently captured, tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be hanged, but, after remaining in prison eighteen months, was by some error exchanged. Five of the McCooks met violent deaths. Charles M. McCook, private of the Second Ohio, was killed at Bull Run. Maj. Dan McCook, the father, was killed while riding at the head of Morgan’s pursuers, at Buffington Island, Ohio. Dan McCook, Colonel of the Fiftysecond Ohio, was mortally wounded at Kenesaw Mountain, in July, 1864, and Gen. E. S. McCook was assassinated at Yankton, Dakota, in October, 1874.