Daniel McFarland Cook
In the year 1815, Daniel and Catharine Pierson Cook, the parents of the subject of this biography, emigrated from Washington County, Pa., to the farm, 2½ miles south of Mansfield, Richland County, O., arriving there Sept. 10. On this farm, Nov. 25, 1820, this son was born. The lineage of this family comes from England and Scotland, through the blood of the father and from one of the best families of Holland through the mother -- a Van Dyke, whose ancestors settled in New Jersey, previous to the war of 1776. The mental and physical attributes of these blended nationalities were transmitted and emphasized through the years of honest toil and struggle in the New World. Obedient to his parents, yet insubordinate in spirit, comet-like, he had always pursued an independent course, not seeming to be held in any particular orbit by any special law or force. The education of D.M. Cook commenced in the year 1824, in the log schoolhouse situated on what is now known as Sandy Hill, in the township and county in which he was born and was continued at Oberlin College, where his school days ended. But not his education, for he was always a student, observer and reader at home or abroad. In his youth he read the Bible through three times and memorized half the New Testament. He joined the Presbyterian church at 13 years of age, remaining a member of that body for three years, then united with the Congregational church. From that time until the age of 21, he studied for the ministry, but circumstances turning his steps in another direction, his mind became permeated with broader, liberalistic thought and a desire for a knowledge of the sciences, which led him into the inventive field. Sugar making, from the sap of the hard maple, which here grew so abundantly, was an industry on this farm and was subsequently known as "Cook's Sugar Camp", with it's 1,000 trees. The primitive method of evaporation proved unsatisfactory to his restless and aspiring mind and culminated in the "Cook Evaporator" in the year 1858, a complete, clean and almost perfect process, used to evaporate maple sap and more especially to make syrup from sorghum. During these years of scientific thought and research, began his investigation of mesmerism, magnetism and electricity. Nearly half a century has passed since he began active work upon this principal and to study and investigate the nature and science of electricity. And from a novitiate he became one of the greatest electricians of the present century. Years ago he exhibited in Mansfield substantially the arc light and his patent thereon was taken to New York City by a gentleman still living and over the city and Bay of New York the light was cast. Had he followed that invention up with rigor and some money, the name of D.M. Cook would have found a place high up on the scroll of famous inventors. Like all men given to invention he was secretive and in a measure lacked confidence, not in himself, but in his fellow men and so he lost by reason thereof. His investigations were in many fields of scientific research and endeavor. he spent some months in California, not so much for the desire of getting gold, but more for the purpose of applying new methods which were in his mind for the separation of gold from the worthless rock in which it was encased. His latest effort was to make "a perpetual electric generator or motor, to propel itself by its own current, the resistance of the generator proper being about 10 per cent of the rotary power of the electric engine upon which the current of the generator acts." He conceived of the idea of this principle, but failed to bring it to a successful consummation. It remains for the future inventor to develop. The world can never know what is embodied in those long years of self-sacrifice, but his own weary soul and the faithful little band that labored with him knew. It is only a simple act of justice to here record the fidelity of his faithful brother, James Cook, who was auxiliary to and aided and supported him in all his trials and toil as an inventor, by sympathy, counsel and active participation in all the duties and demands of all those long years of privation and trial. May 17, 1897, the weary spirit of D.M. Cook, this loving husband and father, was released from earth with its sorrow and disappointment. Let the people of Richland County clothe his memory with a due appreciation of his life long effort to benefit humanity. And show due respect to his wife and child and his faithful assistant in their untiring effort to aid him in his life work. Suffering privation and poverty and giving the best years of their life in this quest for the good of the world. Let them hold a place in the history of the county when its record is written as sacred to the memory of the pioneers that developed it from a wilderness and "made it blossom as the rose."
From Semi-Weekly News: November 23, 1897, Vol. 13, No. 94