Church Hill
or Mordecai’s Mount
Gloucester County, Virginia
In 1650, a grant of 1174 acres in Gloucester was made to Mordecai Cooke, who became Sheriff of Gloucester as well as a member of the House of Burgesses. In 1658, he built a large brick house on the land just above the Ware River. Over the centuries, the brick house burned, with only a small portion surviving. This nineteenth century frame house was built on the old foundations. Walnut trees from Shelly were cut down and used for paneling inside the present house in about 1935, according to Col. C. Wray Page, whose uncle Mann told of the work.
The name of the home was changed rather early from Mordecai’s Mount to Church Hill (re: Emmie F. Farrar’s "Old Virginia Houses").
Dr. and Mrs. William Carter Stubbs of New Orleans wrote a history in 1923, "Descendants of Mordecai Cooke," tracing the Cooke family from 1650. Mordecai Cook’s daughter Susan married Captain Henry Fitzhugh. Another daughter, Frances, married Gabriel Throckmorton in 1690, and gave the land on which the present Ware Church was built soon after. The Church Hill property passed directly from the Cookes to their descendants, the Throckmortons, one of whom married Mr. William Taliaferro. When she died, her sister and co-heiress married the widower, the estate thus passing to the Taliaferros.
A ghost story at Church Hill involves the tragic death of one of the Taliaferro girls, who was not allowed to marry the handsome young Englishman she had met in London.
A list of family histories connected to Church Hill includes: Cooke, Booth, Ironmonger, Whiting, Gregory, Peyton, Smith, as well as Fitzhugh, Throckmorton, Taliaferro and others. This opens up a whole new vista for tree-hunting!
