Henry David Cooke

Henry David Cooke (November 23, 1825 – February 24, 1881) was an American financier, journalist, railroad executive, and politician. He was the younger brother of Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke. A member of the Republican political machine in post-Civil War Washington, D.C., Cooke was appointed first territorial governor of the District of Columbia by Ulysses S. Grant. Biography Born in Sandusky, Ohio, in 1825, a son of Congressman Eleutheros Cooke, Henry D. Cooke studied at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he graduated in 1844. He began to study law but soon turned his attention to journalism. In 1847, he sailed for Valparaiso, Chile, as an attaché to the United States consul there, but was shipwrecked. He was detained after the wreck at St. Thomas, where he conceived the idea of a steamship line from New York to San Francisco via the isthmus of Panama and wrote about his idea to the Philadelphia United States Gazette and the New York Courier and Enquirer. Consul W. G. Moorhead told other State Department officials about the idea, and in about two years the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was organized. Cooke afterward lived in San Francisco, where he was connected with shipping interests. He was the first to announce to the authorities at Washington, through a despatch from the military governor of California, the discovery of gold in the Sacramento valley. Becoming involved by suretyship for a reckless speculator, he lost his fortune. (Another source says a fire in San Francisco left him burdened with debts.) He returned to Ohio, joined the Sandusky Register as a journalist, and by 1856 had become the newspaper's sole editor and proprietor. That same year he became a presidential elector for John C. Fremont, the first Republican candidate for President of the United States. By 1860, Cooke was the proprietor of the Ohio State Journal, a Republican newspaper. Although it was unprofitable, it made him a favorite of various Washington officials, including Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Senator John J. Sherman, and General Ulysses S. Grant. These alliances made Cooke a particular asset to his brother Jay; Chase's friendship allowed the Cookes to become war profiteers during the Civil War, selling bonds and establishing the sale of government loans. In 1862, Jay Cooke opened a Washington branch of his Jay Cooke & Co.