John Hartwell Cocke John Hartwell Cocke II ( or Jr . ) ( September 19 , 1780 – June 24 , 1866 ) was an American military officer , planter and businessman . During the War of 1812 , Cocke was a brigadier general of the Virginia militia . After his military service , he invested in the James River and Kanawha Company and helped Thomas Jefferson establish the University of Virginia . The family estate that Cocke built at Bremo Plantation is now a National Historic Landmark . Biography . Early life and education . John Hartwell Cocke II was born on September 19 , 1780 , at the Mount Pleasant plantation in Surry County , Virginia . With the exception of his younger brother Robert Kennon Cocke , who died in 1790 , John was the only son of eight children born to John Hartwell Cocke I and Elizabeth Kennon Cocke . The elder Cocke had married Elizabeth Kennon , who grew up on her parents ' plantation named Mount Pleasant , in Chesterfield County , Virginia . He became a colonel in the American Revolution . The younger Cocke was orphaned by the age of twelve ; he inherited his father ' s plantation and slaves , which he took over after coming of age . At the age of fourteen , Cocke enrolled at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg , Virginia , where he stayed at the home of Colonel Champion Travis . Cocke graduated as part of the class of 1798 . Upon his twenty - first birthday in 1801 , he legally inherited the Mount Pleasant plantation . Marriage and family . Cocke married Anne Blaus ( or Blaws ) Barraud in Norfolk , Virginia , on December 25 , 1802 . Her father , Philip Barraud , was a physician who practiced medicine in Williamsburg , where Cocke had studied . Anne stayed in Norfolk until March 1803 , while Cocke renovated the plantation home in Surry County . The Cockes had a son , John Hartwell , in 1804 and a daughter , Louisiana Barraud , in 1806 at Mount Pleasant . In 1809 , Cocke sold the plantation to his sister Sally and her husband Nicholas Faulcon . He moved with his family to Bremo Plantation , which he had built on the northern bank of the James River in Fluvanna County in the Piedmont . HIs wife gave birth at Bremo to another son , Philip St . George , in 1809 and another daughter , Ann Blaus , in 1811 . War of 1812 . During the War of 1812 , Cocke was commissioned as a brigadier general in command of the Virginia militia based out of Camp Carter and Camp Holly . His brigade was composed of companies of troops from Fluvanna County . From 1812 to 1813 , Cocke led the defense of Richmond , Virginia along the Chickahominy River against British forces . Cocke was noted for being a distinguished officer ; the strict discipline he enforced upon insubordinate soldiers was compared to that of Baron von Steuben . Cocke rode a bay stallion named Roebuck during the war . Post - war life . After the war , Cocke returned to his estate at Bremo , where his wife had another son , Cary Charles , born in 1814 . Cocke ' s wife Anne died in December 1816 , a few months after the birth of their youngest daughter , Sally Faulcon . Anne was buried at Bremo Recess . In 1819 , Cocke completed construction of a large plantation mansion at Upper Bremo with the master builder John Neilson , who had worked with Thomas Jefferson on Monticello . That year , Cocke was appointed by Virginia governor James Patton Preston to the first Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia . By the time Cocke retired from the board in 1852 , annual enrollment at the university had reached 400 students . In 1835 , Cocke joined the board of directors of the James River and Kanawha Company , which was established to develop canals to improve water transportation along of the James River . The river traffic became an important part of the local economy in the following decades , but a series of floods and the American Civil War brought an end to this era . By 1848 , Cocke started another plantation in Alabama , where he taught self - government to slaves for eventual emancipation . He spent some of his own money to send freed slaves to colonize Liberia . In 1855 , Cocke traded his mansion for the smaller home of his son Cary Charles on the plantation , where he retired for the remainder of his years . Legacy . John Hartwell Cocke ' s son Philip St . George Cocke was commissioned as a colonel in the Confederate States Army , commanding troops at the Battle of Blackburn ' s Ford and the First Battle of Bull Run . Promoted to brigadier general in 1861 , he committed suicide that year before Christmas . He was described as " excitable " and " eccentric , " but no one really understood what made him take such action . In 1881 , John ' s last surviving son , Dr . Cary Charles Cocke , along with William Cocke and Charles E . Cosby , purchased land nearby in Bremo Bluff to relocate a chapel which John Hartwell Cocke had built for his slaves on the plantation . Consecrated as part of an Episcopal Church , the Bremo Slave Chapel was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 1979 and the National Register of Historic Places in March 1980 . Cocke ' s plantation was declared a National Historic Landmark as Bremo Historic District in November 1971 . He also designed Glen Burnie near Palmyra , Virginia and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000 . Collaboration with Thomas Jefferson . Cocke was a longtime associate of former president Thomas Jefferson , and he sometimes traded for items grown at Jefferson ' s Monticello estate . Cocke collaborated with James Madison , James Monroe , and Joseph Carrington Cabell to fulfill Jefferson ' s dream to establish the University of Virginia . Cocke and Jefferson were appointed to the building committee to supervise the construction of the new university . Cocke ' s conservative practicality occasionally clashed with Jefferson ' s creative aesthetics , such as his opposition to Jefferson ' s flat roof design , which he thought would compromise the durability of buildings for students . Jefferson ' s trust in the younger man was shown by his arranging for Cocke to take over executorship of the will of Tadeusz Kościuszko , a Polish nobleman whom Jefferson had befriended during the American Revolutionary War . On a visit to the United States in 1798 , Kościuszko entrusted his pension from the Army and other monies to his friend Jefferson , together with his will ; he intended to have his American estate used to purchase the freedom of slaves , including Jefferson ' s own . After Kościuszko ' s death in 1817 , Jefferson took no action for several years . He pleaded old age and had the trust transferred to Cocke , although he could have freed all his slaves at no cost to himself . After his death , 130 slaves were sold at auction from Monticello splitting apart many stable families . As Cocke also failed to free any slaves , finally in 1852 , the case ended up at the US Supreme Court , which ruled that the estate should be transferred to heirs in Poland . Since the late twentieth century , Cocke ' s diaries have attracted the attention of historians because of his writing about Jefferson ' s slave mistress . The long debate known as the Jefferson - Hemings controversy has related to whether the president had an intimate connection with his slave Sally Hemings and her children . Most historians now believe that Jefferson had a long relationship with Hemings and four surviving children by her . He freed all of them , two informally and two in his will . Cocke wrote of his knowledge that Jefferson had fathered children with his slave mistress . In keeping with the social demands for discretion among planters on such interracial liaisons , Cocke did not reveal his knowledge until years after Jefferson had died . He wrote about the slave concubines :