Matilda Cook's Life And Accomplishments

Fourteen-year-old Matilda (Mattie) Cook lived above a coffeehouse in Philadelphia during the late 1700’s. She shared the home with Lucille, her widowed mother, Captain William Farnsworth Cook, her grandfather who was a retired sailor along-with King George, his parrot, in addition to Silas, her orange cat. Lucille was an extremely bad cook, but fortunately, she hired an African- American woman named Eliza to prepare the meals. The coffeehouse that the Cook family lived above and owned was built by Matilda’s deceased father in 1783 when Mattie was just four years old. The coffeehouse used to be empty during open hours; however, when President Washington moved in just two blocks down, business flourished! The coffeehouse waitress Polly, didn’t show up for work one day. Matilda and Lucille just anticipated that she was late, but were perplexed when she never showed up. The Cook’s soon found out that she had come down with the fever and believe it or not just within a few hours of them knowing, she was pronounced dead. Soon more deaths followed and rumors of an epidemic spread throughout Philadelphia.

Lucille fell ill and called upon many doctors to help cure her. Though she called many doctors to …show more content…
The September heat was unbearable and caused Grandfather to become weak. The wagon had to roll up to a stop where doctors could make sure no people infected with the fever were let into the “fever-free country”. Since the heat made Matilda's grandfather weak, the doctors didn’t let them into the country because they presumed he had the fever do to his appearance. Instead of letting them turn the wagon around and head home, they were kicked off! Grandfather was too weak to walk home, so they had to sleep overnight in the fields. Matilda found herself growing weaker and weaker as she tried to take care of Grandfather in the fields. And then, she blacked