From the Big Thicket Guide Book: On a hot and humid day in June 1850, the ship Burke Neptune arrived at Galveston with a party of German immigrants, including Frederich Koch, his wife and six children. They were dismayed to find this was not the land of milk and honey, yet decided to stay. They took a boat but something went wrong and they were left at Sabine Pass. They made their way north to the mouth of Pine Island Bayou where they stopped for a year or two, making a crop. There Frederich died. By now they had changed their name to Cook. Mrs Cook and her sons made rafts, loaded their belongings and poled up Village Creek to the site of Cook's bluff south of Silsbee. On their arrival they found a group of squatters but after paying them $25, they left. The growth of live oaks on the west side of the Santa Fe tracks came from acorns brought by August Cook from Germany. All the other live oaks in the area came from acorns from those trees. Frederick Cook opened a ferry across Village Creek and built a home for his family on the banks. Ben Hooks had a large saloon on the west side of the creek.