John,

The story about the shooting of Andy Cook is Cook family oral history passed down to the present along with a few other Civil War experiences of Andy's relative, Francis Marion Cook. One of these "Uncle Frank" stories is that at the end of the war Frank, like many other soldiers of General John B. Hood's Army of Tennessee did not surrender but took his rifle musket and simply went home with it, placing it in the spring house at his dad's home. I read in other places about veterans of Army of Tennessee just quitting and bringing their firearms home. I reminded Uncle Stanley about this a few years ago, so he looked in the spring house and found what little was left of the rifle after lying in the wet dirt inside the spring house for about 140 years. He also found Andy's peg leg. This didn't hurt my credentials as a researcher with the Cooks and gave me great respect for the "Uncle Frank" stories. So far, I have not found any problem with the veracity of any of them.

You will find the connection of the shooting of Andy Cook with the accusation that he was one of the shooters of Conductor Whipple in August 1861 in that January 1862 article of the St. Louis newspaper I quoted in that list earlier. The patrol of 11th Iowa Infantrymen had Andy's name on a list of suspects to find when he saw them coming and tried to run. The Yanks took pity on what they considered to be a mortally wounded Andy Cook they had just shot and carried him to his family home nearby to the tender mercies of his family. Andy's and Frank's shooting at the train is one of the Uncle Frank stories as well as the soldiers carrying the wounded Andy to his family. I was shocked and gratified to find both stories mentioned in a January 1862 St. Louis newspaper article written by some Iowan.

Family lore says Andy didn't lose the leg, but the damage made by the large Minie bullet entering the back of Andy's thigh resulted in that leg being considerably shorter than the other. Someone, maybe Andy himself, fashioned that peg leg so that Andy could walk in a more normal fashion to continue farming and support his family. The peg leg is now mounted on a wall and contains a dried flower arrangement. Seems fitting somehow.

Bruce