Horace Thomas Cook

COOK

Posted By: County Coordinator (email)
Date: 4/12/2010 at 12:30:27

Horace Thomas Cook is the oldest representative of mercantile interets in Boone in years of continuous connnection with business. The spirit of enterprise and progress has ever dominated him in all that he has undertaken, and he has built up a business of large and gratifying proportaions. He as born in Boonesboro, Iowa May 21, 1868, a son of Lorenzo Dow and Belle (Thomas) Cook, the former a native of Illinois and the latter of Indiana. In the year 1854, the father arrived in Boone county and began clerking for his father- n- law, Shallum Thomas, who settled in Boonesboro in 1852. After a few years he became a partner in the store and later took over ther business, subsequent to which time he admitted two partners. The firm name was then L D Cook & Company. Mr Cook afterward purchased a business in Boone in 1878 and conducted the two stores. About 1880 he purhased the interset of his two partners and in 1883 he retired from business. His interests had been carefully managed and his energy and determination enabled him to overcome all difficulities and obstacles and worked his way steadily upward to success. Mr Cook parted this life in December 1886, having for ten years, survied his wife, who died in June 1876. Unto them were born three children: Nora and Grace, both of whom died in infancy and Horace Thomas. Following the death of his first wife and the father married in 1878 to Clara Benjamin, and unto them was born a daughter, Clara Belle, now the wife of Dr Heinenan of Colorado. Mrs Lorenzo D Cook-Leonard is a resident of California.
Horace T Cook reared in his native county, attended school until sixteen years of age and then entered the business life in connection with the trade of bookbinding. At a later date he entered into active connection with the clothing business as an employe of the firm Wallace & Johnson. This was in 1888 and he coninted in that house for seven and a half years. In 1897 he established a business on his own account in connection with James T Ragan the partnership contunuing for nine months under the firm style of Cook & Regan. At the end of that time Mr Cook purchased the business, which has since been carried on under the name of H T Cook. He carries a large and well selected line of men's clothing and furnishings and is today the odest represetative in the mercantile line in Boone. His store is well appointed, his stock large and attractive and his progressive methods have placed him among the leading and successful merchants of his part of the state. The location of the store would ordinarily insure good business, but he personality of the owner and his methods according to the genreal opinion have been the slient features in this growing success.
He had made it his purpose to serve each customer in such a way as to secure his continued patrongae and friendship and the same treatment is carreid out by those in his employ in the conduct of all business transactions. Mr cook is outspoken and always to the point, qualities which are admired by those who have regard for truth and honor anything that even approaches hypocrisy or dissimulation in the slightest degree.
On September 23, 1890, Mr Cook was united in marriage to Miss Harriet M Shulters, a native of Boone ,and they became the parents of four children: Margaret deceased, Lucille twin to Margaret, who has also passed away, Caryl Clare, born in July 1894, and Horace Dow, whose birth occurred in May 1899. In his political views Mr Cook is a stalwart republican and keeps well informed on the questions and issures of the day. He belongs to the Masonic order and to the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and his religious faith is that of the Presbyterian church. These assocations indicate much of the princiiples that govern his conduct and have made him a man whom to know is to resect and honor. He has a wide and favorable acquaintance in his native county, and the fact that many of his stanchest friends are those who have known hiim from his boyhood indicates that his life has been and honorable and upright one.

1914 Boone County History Book