His biography is briefly inscribed upon his monument in the following words:
"Nicholas Cooke, born in Providence, February 3d, 1717; Died September 14th, 1782. Unanimously elected Governor of Rhode Island in 1775, he remained in office during the darkest period of the American Revolution. He merited and won the approbation of his fellow-citizens, and was honored with the friendship and confidence of Washington."
This is the inscription upon the east side, immediately above which, in raised letters, is the name Cooke. On the west is the following:
"Hannah Sabine, relict of Nicholas Cooke, born in Killingly, Connecticut, March 13th, 1722; died in Providence, March 22d, 1792." This monument is about twenty feet high, composed of a single block. The sketch of it here given is from the cemetery, looking eastward, and includes in the distance the French camp-ground just mentioned. The most remote of the two fields seen between the trees on the right, is the one wherein the remains of the encampment are to be seen.
On the road leading from the cemetery to the town is a brick building, with a hip-roof, which La Fayette occupied as head-quarters, while in Providence a short time in 1778 He had been sent by Washington with two thousand men to assist Sullivan in the siege of Newport. The house is well preserved, but changed somewhat in its external appearance On our way into the town we passed along Benefit Street, on the east side of which, in a vacant lot, upon the slope of a steep hill, near the mansion of the father of Governor Dorr, is a living water-fountain, called Roger Williams's Spring. Tradition asserts that here, in the cool shade of sycamores (of which the huge trees that now overshadow it are the sprouts), Williams first reposed after his journey, and that here his first tent was pitched, at twilight, on a beautiful evening in June. It is a pleasant spot now, even with the pent-up city around it; it must then have been a delicious resting-place for the weary exile, for below him were the bright waters of the Narraganset, beyond which arose the gentle slopes and more lofty hills of the fair land of Canonicus, his friend and protector.