Thornaby, a settlement from the arrival of the Danes in 800 AD is the birthplace of Cook's mother Grace Pace.

On October 10th 1725 she married James Cook, a day farm labourer, who had come south from the banks of the River Tweed in Roxburghshire, Scotland, following the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The centre of Thornaby has moved in recent years and is now part of Stockton-on-Tees. In Stockton parish church there is a memorial to Captain James Cook and an altarpiece made of wood from the Resolution.

Grace and James Cook had eight children. Four died in childhood. Only the second son James and his sisters Margaret and Christiana survived. Margaret married a man named Fleck of Redcar, and Christiana married a fisherman named Cocker of Staithes, where her father James lived with them.

At Marske by the sea, the tower of St Germain's Church overlooks the grave of James Cook senior. Mrs Grace Cook is buried with her five other children at Great Ayton. In addition to his father's roots by the river Tweed, the Tweed was the name of a ship that Cook served on in 1763 (see page 650, Cook's Log), and the name of the sculptor of the Whitby statue.

Brenda Paulding

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 911, volume 16, number 2 (1993).