Cook, T. N. Rev. 1957 – 1895

COOK

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 3/21/2021 at 14:37:50

Source: Decorah Republican Aug. 29, 1895 P 1 C 4

Death of a Beloved Pastor.
Rev. T. N. Cook was sent to New Hampton as pastor of the M. E. church in 1891. He died, after a brief illness from acute Bright’s disease on the 19th inst., and the entire community mourned his loss. The Tribune, the Democratic paper, pays this tribute to his memory:—
When Rev. Cook began his pastorate in New Hampton, in the autumn of 1891, he was utterly unknown here. He had been here but a short time before the people began to feel that a new element, working for the good of the town, had begun its beneficial work. Always courteous and affable, never effusive, never failing to have a kind word for all, even the little children on the streets began to learn to welcome his presence and to be made glad by meeting him. How soon his value as a helping element to all that goes to make a community better was recognized is well known to all our citizens, whether church members or not. To have among us a man full of the spirit of Christ and him crucified, a man whose soul was so full of that spirit that it showed itself everywhere without his making the least effort to parade it, a man who knew every man as his brother, a man who gave his aid—and gave it most heartily—to those who needed it most rarely, a man who seemed wholly unconscious of himself and only conscious of the greatness of the burden which life brings to the unfortunate, and conscious of the duty owed by the more fortunate to relieve those burdens, to have in our midst such a man as this was to have a man whose value is, indeed, very hard to estimate.
There never was the faintest trace of narrowness in his nature. Among the men who have helped to greatly broaden the spirit of religion in this community Rev. Cook stands pre-eminent. It was not oratory, not stage eloquence, it was the strange nature of the man, made more than eloquent by his indomitable spirit and daily conduct which made Rev. Cook a power in the pulpit. No one ever went away without think that there was a man who fully believed what he said and always said something good to hear.

Transcriber’s Note: Find a Grave shows he was born Nov. 5, 1857 and he is buried in the New Hampton Cemetery.