William Michael Cocke (July 16, 1815 – February 6, 1896) was an American politician who represented Tennessee's
second district in the
United States House of Representatives.
Biography
Cocke was born in
Rutledge, Tennessee on July 16, 1815. He pursued classical studies and graduated from
East Tennessee College at
Knoxville, Tennessee. He studied law, was admitted to the
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
, and practiced in Rutledge and
Nashville
Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
. Cocke was
Clerk of Grainger County
Circuit Court from 1840-1845. He served as a member of the
Tennessee House of Representatives
The Tennessee House of Representatives is the lower house of the Tennessee General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Tennessee.
Constitutional requirements
According to the state constitution of 1870, this body is to consis ...
.
On January 15, 1835, he married his first cousin, Sarah Frances Cocke, daughter of Willis and Margaret E. Rogers Cocke. They had seven children. There were no children by his second marriage to Amanda Grigsby, nor his third to Noel.
Career
Cocke was elected as a
Whig to the
Twenty-ninth and
Thirtieth Congresses. He served from March 4, 1845 to March 3, 1849. During the Thirtieth Congress, he was chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Revolutionary Pensions. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1848.
Elected to the State Senate, Cocke served from 1855 to 1857. Cocke served in the 31st General Assembly in the second session of 1855-1896, replacing Christopher Hitch, who had resigned; representing Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, and Grainger counties as a Democrat. His uncle, John Cocke, also served as a member of the Tennessee general Assembly. From 1859 to 1865, he resided in Asheville, North Carolina. in about 1872, he moved to Lexington, Kentucky, and from there to Nashville, in Davidson County, Tennessee.
Death
Cocke died in Nashville on February 6, 1896 (age 80 years, 205 days). He is
interred at
Mount Olivet Cemetery. He was the grandson of
William Cocke and the nephew of
John Alexander Cocke.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cocke, William Michael
1815 births
1896 deaths
Members of the Tennessee House of Representatives
Whig Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Tennessee
People from Rutledge, Tennessee
19th-century American politicians