Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill | |
---|---|
Born | February 10, 1757 |
Died | October 13, 1821 Tennessee |
Resting place | Nashville City Cemetery |
Occupation | Landowner |
Spouse | John Cockrill |
Children | 8, including Mark R. Cockrill |
Relatives | James Robertson (brother) Felix Robertson (nephew) Benjamin F. Cockrill Jr. (great-grandson) |
Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill (February 10, 1757–October 13, 1821) was an American pioneer. She became the first woman to receive a land grant in Tennessee.
Anne Robertson Johnson Cockrill was born on February 10, 1757, in Wake County, North Carolina.[1] Her brother, James Robertson (1742-1814), founded Fort Nashborough alongside John Donelson (1718–1785).
She moved to Fort Watauga in North Carolina, and later moved to Fort Caswell.[1][2] When it was attacked by Native Americans, she led a group of women to throw boiling water at them to ward them off.[2]
Her first husband was a justice of the peace in the Washington District of East Tennessee and was killed in an accident.[1][2][3] After he died, Cockrill and her three small daughters joined Colonel John Donelson in the migration of the first pioneers on a flatboat to go down the Cumberland River to Tennessee to the Cumberland settlements.[2] The exhibition was intended to bring families of the men who settled Nashville there.[4] During the journey, she taught the children in the boat to make small wooden boxes, filling them with river sand, and drawing letters and numbers in the sand.[3] She was later honored as Middle Tennessee’s first teacher.[5]
In 1784, she received a land grant for 640-acre from the North Carolina legislature; she was the first woman in this position.[2][4] The land was then known as Cockrill Springs and was situated on what is now Centennial Park in Nashville, Tennessee, near the campus of Vanderbilt University.[2] There is now a monument in her memory there.[2]
She died on October 13, 1821, in Tennessee. She was buried in the Nashville City Cemetery.[2]