One of the best known figures in the early days of Illinois was Daniel Pope Cook, for whom Cook County was named, although he probably never saw Fort Dearborn, the Chicago River or the little village of Chicago that was one day to become the largest city in the state.

Cook was born in 1794 - not in Illinois but across the Ohio River in Scott County, Ky.

Apprenticed to a merchant, he aspired to something greater and came to Illinois, where, under the guidance of a relative - Nathaniel Pope, secretary of the Illinois Territory - he was able to set up a practice in 1815 as a lawyer in the territorial capital, Kaskaskia.

A year earlier, Matthew Duncan had set up the first newspaper in Illinois, the Illinois Herald.

Cook became the editor of the Herald, and in 1817, he and a partner bought the paper and changed its name to the Illinois Intelligencer. (Later, when the Illinois capital was moved to Vandalia in 1820, they moved the paper with it.)

Cook soon began to put his name before the public as a political candidate. Ninian Edwards, the territorial governor, had named him auditor of public accounts in 1816.

He visited Nathaniel Pope in Washington, where Pope was the Illinois delegate to Congress, and met President-elect James Monroe, who sent him to London to carry some letters to John Quincy Adams, who then represented the United States in England.

Included was an invitation for Adams to serve as secretary of state in Monroe's cabinet.

Cook and Adams sailed back to the States together and became friends.

When Cook returned to Illinois, he had an appointment as circuit judge for the western district, which included the counties around Kaskaskia.

The Honorable Daniel Cook presided at the first session of court in Union County in the log home of Jacob Hunsaker on May 1, 1818.

Most citizens with business in the "courtroom" were dressed in hunting shirts and coonskin caps. Most were barefoot or wore deerskin moccasins. Only the judge and a couple of lawyers wore "store clothes."

The grand jury conducted its deliberations outside, seated upon fallen logs.

Cook had brought back from Washington the idea that Illinois should become a state. He advocated his position in the Intelligencer.

When the territorial legislature met in December 1817, Cook was elected clerk of the lower house.

The House drafted a letter to Washington appealing for statehood. Nathaniel Pope presented the letter to Congress and the enabling act he wrote was approved in April 1818.

A constitutional convention was held in August in Kaskaskia and an election for state officers was held in September.

On Oct. 5, 1818, Shadrach Bond was inaugurated as the first governor of the state of Illinois.

Cook was active in the election campaign and was appointed as the first attorney general of Illinois.

A few months later, Cook announced his candidacy for Congress.

Judge Cook became U.S. Representative Cook in August 1819.

He was just 25, but had only a few years of life before him.

In that time, he insisted that the new National Road being constructed from Maryland through Ohio and Indiana be extended to Alton, Ill., on the Mississippi River.

Perhaps his most noteworthy accomplishment - and the one for which his name was given to Cook County - was securing the donation of 300,000 acres of land for the Chicago and Michigan Canal.

He established the precedent that public lands should be used for public purposes and not just to enrich the U.S. Treasury.

In 1821, Cook married the eldest daughter of Ninian Edwards, by then a U.S. senator, and the couple made their home in Edwardsville.

As a candidate for re-election Cook canvassed the state against slavery. The anti-slavery forces won in the 1824 election.

During his fourth term, his health failed and after a brief mission to Cuba, he returned to his native Kentucky, where he died on Oct. 16, 1827.

"Daniel Pope Cook was the idol of Egypt, when Egypt (Southern Illinois) WAS Illinois," wrote historian Barbara Burr Hubbs in the Egyptian Key magazine of August 1946.

Ben Gelman is a former Sunday news editor for The Southern Illinoisan and is an avid bird watcher.