Henry Cooke wrote in the Gibraltar Record that "evidently word has gone out to the nation that the Gibraltar family has departed, or at least that the...post of artist is vacant, for yesterday said artist [Rev. Henry Cooke] was quite aghast, when upon looking out of the library window he beheld a new aspirant...engaged in photographing...the monument." The "monument" to which Henry referred was built by his father Jay Cooke in commemoration of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's Victory on Lake Erie in September 1813. The base was laid in 1858, but the monument was never completed. After purchasing the island in 1864, Jay Cooke completed the monument to Perry using the existing base.