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"A Home for All" ~ Mid-Century: 1840s - 1850s doubt the hungry revellers kept the kitchen's huge brick ovens filled to capacity. At the end of the affair Lord Elgin showed his appreciation to his hosts by requesting that he be able to bestow his family name on the as-yet unnamed mansion. The Cooke home thereafter became known as "Brucefield." The revelry enjoyed in Mount Pleasant must have been a welcome diversion for the "care-worn" Governor General beleaguered by the tense politics of the day. He recently had passed the Rebellion Losses Bill, an act that compensated property owners for losses during the Lower Canadian Rebellion. While his compliance on the bill assured responsible government in the province, many Tories opposed the compensation, seeing it as rewarding treason as many of those compensated would have been rebels themselves. Their anger exploded in the spring when Elgin passed the bill and angry mobs burned the parliament buildings for the United Canadas in Montreal. While feelings never reached these extremes in the Grand River area, Lord Elgin's visit in September rekindled the bitterness and hostility between local factions of loyalists and reformers that had existed since the Rebellions. In fact William Winer "Willie" Cooke, privileged son of Dr. Alexander Cooke, grandson of Abraham Cooke, professional soldier. Lt. Cooke, dressed here in the uniform of the United States Seventh Cavalry, was the epitome of military glory. Always ready for action, he was an excellent athlete, an expert sharpshooter, a ladies' man, and very noticeable for his bushy side whiskers which drooped as far as the third buttons on his tunic. Years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a Cheyenne Indian called Woodenleg said he remembered scalping long thick whiskers from the cheek of a soldier (Cooke). He allegedly fastened them to an arrow shaft as a battle trophy and presented them to his grandmother. Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, D. F. Barry, B-206.