Edmund Francis Cooke was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New York. Cooke was born in Prescott, Arizona, then a small frontier town. In his infancy, the Yavapai Indians were rumored to be preparing an attack on the settlement. Fearing that he might be killed without having been baptized, his mother summoned a neighbor and the two women christened him without benefit of clergy. He moved with his parents to Alden, New York in 1887 where his grandfather lived, and it was there that he gained a first-hand knowledge of dairy farmers' problems and polished his oratorical skills by giving speeches to the corn stalks in the fields. Cooke studied law in the office of former New York State Supreme Court Judge Harold Hinman of Albany. He was admitted to the bar in 1910 and practiced law in Alden. During World War I he was Secretary for the YMCA in Europe and laid plans to pursue a political career when he returned home. A Republican, he was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1923 until 1928. In 1928 he was elected to Congress and served two terms, March 4, 1929 to March 3, 1933. In 1932 ran unsuccessfully for reelection, losing to against Alfred F. Beiter. He then resumed the practice of law in Buffalo and began his decades of work to improve the lot of dairy farmers in the Northeast Milk Shed.