Cooke Settlement, History Williamson County, Texas

Cooke Settlement, the community at Mankin's Crossing east of Georgetown where David S. Cooke and family lived.

Mankin's Crossing, San Gabriel River Crossing east of Georgetown near Cooke Settlement, with early Live Oak Church, brush arbor. In 1892 Harvey T. Stearns built a gin on the west bank near the water's edge. It was run by Glenn Stearns, who moved it to Weir in 1909. The crossing is on the Georgetown-Taylor road. When wagon travelers forded the river, they had a rough ride where water had cut channels in the rock bottom of the creek. Wagons crossing the channels at right angles must hit them head-on; otherwise, if a wheel turned to parallel into a crack it was usually caught and twisted off the wagon. At the north edge of the old gin site, the first low water bridge was put up at the crossing about 1913, amount­ing to a wall of concrete on each side and the center filled with gravel. The first time the river rose, the gravel washed away. The county filled in with cement instead of gravel and the bridge is still intact in 1973, a favorite place for picnickers, fishermen, and swimmers. When the C. J. Brady family lived near there in 1881, they rode a boat down the river to church services in Jonah and occasionally saw alligators in the water.

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