Cook, Russell S

Cook, Russell S.

an American Congregational clergyman, was born in New Marlborough, Mass., March 6, 1811. After being for a short time in a lawyer's office, he studied theology at the Theological Seminary at Auburn. In 1836 he was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Lanesboro, Mass. In 1839 he was elected secretary of the American Tract Society, in which office he remained until 1856, when failing health obliged him to retire. He was a regular contributor to the American Messenger, the monthly organ of the society; and to his labor the development of the colportage system was greatly due. After a visit to Europe in 1856, he in 1857 became the secretary of the Sabbath Committee in New York, and in 1863 he added to his work on this committee several weeks of exhausting labor in organizing and energizing the Christian Commission in New York. He died at Pleasant Valley, near Poughkeepsie, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1864. — See Annual American Cyclop. for 1864, p. 354.