Augustalee Continues Historic Legacy Of Caring For The Land And People

Augustalee is being developed on a site that has a rich history of people caring for the land and each other. For more than 100 years it was part of the Cooke family farm, and until recently several members of the Cooke family have lived there.

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Moses Sidney Cook (then spelled without an ‘e’) moved there from nearby Mount Mourne in 1900, before Cornelius was formally founded, with his four children: Triplett, Nannie, Laura and James. They came with all their belongings in a one-horse wagon and walked with their cow. They rented a small portion of a 250-acre farm owned by Dr. J. S. (Sam) Abernathy of Charlotte. Moses’ wife Acenith had died when the children were young, and Moses died in 1901.

Their youngest child, James “Jim” Cooke, married Augusta Lee Chester of Mooresville (for whom our project is named) in 1910 and they lived on a small portion of the farm – now the Augustalee site – before purchasing it with other family members around 1940. Jim had studied Bible for six months as a young student at Rutherford College and read the Bible completely through 28 times during his lifetime. He read the Bible out loud and often played the fiddle at lunch breaks, and could quote much of the Bible from memory. He was a Sunday school teacher and helped build Mt. Zion Church in Cornelius, where he, his wife and other family members are buried.

Augusta Lee Chester Cooke was a very warm, caring Southern lady. She lived on the farm and took care of her large family. (We chose her name for our development because it conveys the warm, gracious, Southern hospitality which this project will exude. 'Augustalee' also has a very lyrical sound when you say it out loud, and is unique for branding purposes.)

Jim and Augusta Cooke’s home place was a small three-room house of mortise and pin construction located at the top of the hill where the southbound lanes of I-77 now run. Over the years additional rooms were added to accommodate growing family needs. They had four children: John, Asenath, Chester, and Moses Pinkney Cooke. In later years, Jim’s grandson Kenneth Cooke led the effort to rename the former Sherrill Road through the property to Jim Cooke Road in memory of his grandfather. Kenneth recently recalled:

“This land was originally covered by large virgin forest pines. Granddaddy Cooke would get out here and dig up stumps by hand with a shovel and mattock. He’d put a chain on the stump and sometimes the little tractor could barely pull it out of the hole. When you see how things have been done over the years, you appreciate that somebody else put a lot of effort into this place.”

In the early days the farm grew a lot of cotton, but in the late 1940s boll weevil infestations stopped much of that. Kenneth remembers the days when his grandfather made him a cotton-picking sack and let him pick cotton in the hot sun. “It takes a lot of cotton to make a bale,” he recalled with a smile.

Kenneth grew up in a white wood frame house still on the property that originally belonged to his parents Moses and Selma Cooke. He had three brothers – Charles, Robert and Joe, and four sisters – Barbara, Betty, Marilyn and Martha.

Kenneth and Marilyn lived with their families on the farm. Kenneth and Joe continued to plant and harvest large wheat fields each season.

Kenneth and Joe are both mechanically gifted and can repair almost any machine or device put in front of them. Kenneth kept a 1961 Farmall tractor made by International Harvester in perfect running order for pulling his rebuilt combine and other farm implements, as well as a 1953 Ford tractor bought at auction from nearby Davidson College and meticulously restored.

“Farming gets into your blood,” Kenneth explained. “I like to get out and work in the dirt, and to see things grow. Sometimes it doesn’t grow. If it doesn’t rain, that’s all you can do. I think about when they were counting on this farm for a living. They planted all kinds of vegetables and fruits, raised cattle, horses, chickens, and hogs, and a lot more. When the crops don’t come up, you’re in bad shape. But because the farm was self-sufficient it helped the family make it through the Depression.”

Kenneth and Kay Cooke raised their family in a brick ranch house that he dug the footings for, made lumber out of trees on the property, and did part of the construction in 1971. Behind it is a cinderblock garage-workshop that he also mostly built, a “man’s castle” sort of place where he builds things, fixes broken things, makes them look good, and keeps them in good working order.

Now he and Kay are moving to a modern farmhouse northwest of Statesville, NC, 0n 73 acres. Kenneth will have to build a new garage-workshop, but that is a task he is well up to. He plans to keep on farming as long as he is able.

While Joe continued to farm the land, his son Jim, a local schoolteacher, lived in the second old house on the property where Mose and Selma lived, but after the sale of the land, has married and moved to Winston-Salem.

Sister Marilyn has also lived on site, across the internal road from Kenneth, and most recently worked in the admissions office of Davidson College before retiring.

Brother Bob recalled, “Our parents throughout were conscious that their primary occupation was ‘growing a family’ and that managing the crops and other tasks was merely a means to an end, not the end itself. They (and we) are proud of our family and their accomplishments from modest beginnings.

“The Cooke children who lived on this farm have developed varied interests in their careers – a medical doctor specializing in rheumatology, a professor of engineering at a research university, a quality assurance telecommunications technician, a teacher of cosmetology at a technical school, an admissions person at a leading liberal arts college, a civil engineer at an energy provider, and a mechanical engineer at a national corporation,” Bob noted.

“We’ve had offers several times to sell all or a part of this property,” Kenneth said. “None of those offers seemed right to us. The place means a lot to the family – all of us. But when we met Walt Rector and learned what he wanted to do, we were impressed. This community can be better than it is right now, especially when you look at some of the things built between Cornelius and Westmoreland Road. It’s embarrassing – there was no well-organized plan for development. When you get down here in my territory, I know we can do better. I want it to look good. I want to stand up when this Augustaleeproject is completed and say, ‘Yes, this is North Mecklenburg.’”

Standing in the front of his current shop and looking out across the land cultivated by his family for more than 100 years, Kenneth said, “I want this place to be something we can be proud of, and I truly believe the folks with Bromont will make that happen here. There’s nothing I want more than to see this project be successful.”
To see our vision of the successful project, click here.