Elizabeth Cocke

• Not the same as Elizabeth Walton
• Not the same as Elizabeth Todd (daughter of Col. Lemuel Mason & Ann Mason)

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Elizabeth Mason was born about 1650. She was the daughter of Lemuel Mason and Ann Seawell. She died after 1683. She Married 1) William Major (son of Edward Major & Martha Butler) 2) Thomas Cocke, of Malvern Hill

Biography

From James Branch Cabell. "The Majors and Their Marriages." The W. C. Hill Printing Co. (Richmond: 1915). Page 39. GoogleBooks

William Major had married, circa 1665, Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Lemuel Mason of Norfolk county. She survived her husband, and was appointed his administratrix, 24 April 1678, giving bond with her attorney, Gideon Macon, for £500, as guardian to her three sons. A note as to Gideon Macon is given on page 50.

In her capacity of administratrix, Elizabeth Major figured in divers suits in the York courts, attendant upon the settlement of her husband's estate: thus, in 1678 she brought suit against John Seaborne, for 1,309 pounds of tobacco, which claim was dismissed; Richard Awborne confessed a judgment of 1,099 pounds of tobacco due to her as administratrix, at the January court 1678-9, as did Ralph Flowers, for 2,055 pounds of tobacco, at the February court; and again, at the October court 1680, judgment was granted to Mr. Gideon Macon, assignee of Mrs. Elizabeth Major, against Ralph Flowers, for £8, Is.

Elizabeth Major had thus remained a widow for at least three years, it may be observed, and probably for five. This was a rather unusual record for seventeenth century Virginia; a striking feature of the period, as will be frequently manifested hereinafter, was the celerity with which a deceased wife or husband was provided with a successor, not infrequently for the fourth or fifth occasion. For girls were marriageable at twelve, for all that cautious John Evelyn, in 1681, estimated that a young lady was not "capable of disposing of herself judiciously till she was sixteen": and the young wife, after bearing some dozen children in rapid succession, was apt to break in health and die, leaving her husband, almost as a matter of course, to re-marry in the prime of life. To the other side, the position of a widow, through the necessities of plantation life, was profoundly unenviable: she was left peculiarly alone, without any neighbors of her own station in life within miles, and was left in precarious authority over a horde of semi-barbarous blacks newly brought from the wilds of Africa, and of white servants who in many cases were transported criminals. Lacking grown sons, she re-married, if not through motives of personal sentiment, through those of conveniency and self-preservation. So, upon whatever grounds, the widow of William Major eventually took another husband—her second choice being fixed, circa 1682-4, on Captain Thomas Cocke of Norfolk county; and she died in 1696, leaving issue by him two daughters, Mary Cocke and Anne Cocke. As has been said previously, the descendants of these daughters, if indeed they left any, cannot now be traced; but information as to their father will be found in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume V, page 182.

William Major and Elizabeth Mason had issue:

1. William d 1716
2. Lemuel
3. John

Perhaps Edward also.

Her daughters with Thomas Cocke were

• 35. MARY4; Mary Cocke, b. Abt 1687, Lynn Haven, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia. Married John Simmons.
• 36. Anne4. Anne Cocke, b. 22 Jul 1690, Lynn Haven, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia , d. Abt 17 Jul 1749, Prince George County, Virginia. Married Robert Bolling (1686-1749)

Origins

Lemuel Mason’s will was dated June 17, 1695, and probated seven years later. He names his three sons, Thomas, Lemuel and George; daughters, Frances, wife of Mr. George Newton; Alice, wife of Samuel Boush, and widow of William Porter; Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Cocke; Margaret, wife of [paper torn], in England; Anne, wife of Mr. Cron [or something like this, but the paper here is also mutilated]; Mary, wife of Walter Gee, and Dinah.

Mrs. Mason's will is also recorded, of date 1704. It recites Frances Sayer, Alice Boush, Mary Cocke, Dinah Thoroughgood.

References

• James Branch Cabell. "The Majors and Their Marriages." The W. C. Hill Printing Co. (Richmond: 1915) 34-38. Also page 25 Archive.Org
• Southside Virginia Families, Volume 1 Page 146-147 Googlebooks
• https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I6063...
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mason-12183
• Jamestowne Society Magazine | Vol. 41, No 2 Fall 2017 A corrected Ancestry for Anne Cocke Bolling by Lyndon H. Hart, III (page 14), accessed 20 September 2021. PDF