March 25, 1841 - Edmund Randolph Cocke is born at Oakland (there are 2 in Cumberland, the other is Carrington), one of his family's plantations in Cumberland County, to William Armistead Cocke and Elizabeth Randolph Preston Cocke.
1856 - Edmund R. Cocke attends Washington College (later Washington and Lee University), staying for two years.
1858 - Edmund R. Cocke transfers to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), where he remains until the start of the American Civil War.
April 23, 1861 - Edmund R. Cocke enlists in the Confederate army as a member of the Black Eagle rifles, a Cumberland County militia unit.
June 1861 - Edmund R. Cocke is elected to the rank of second lieutenant in the 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
1862 - Sometime in the middle of the year Edmund R. Cocke is promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in the 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
January 1863 - Edmund R. Cocke is promoted to the rank of captain in the 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
July 3, 1863 - At Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg, Captain Edmund R. Cocke suffers a superficial wound while serving with the 18the Virginia Infantry Regiment. More than a third of the men in his command, including one of his brothers, are killed.
1865 - Edmund R. Cocke is informally advanced to the rank of major of the 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment.
April 6, 1865 - Confederate officer Edmund R. Cocke is captured at the Battles of Sailor's Creek. After briefly being confined in Washington, D.C., he spends two months as a prisoner-of-war at Johnson's Island, Ohio.
June 9, 1865 - After the surrender of Confederate armies, prisoner-of-war Edmund R. Cocke swears allegiance to the United States and is released on parole. He moves back to Oakland, his family's plantation, where he lives for the next sixty years.
October 17, 1871 - Edmund R. Cocke marries his cousin Phoebe A. Preston, from Rockbridge County. They will have two daughters.
August 5, 1873 - Edmund R. Cocke's wife and cousin, Phoebe Preston, dies after giving birth.
May 6, 1878 - Edmund R. Cocke marries his second wife and cousin, Lucia Cary Harrison, of Charles City County.
1880s - To help offset his financial woes, Edmund R. Cocke begins to sell some of his land at Oakland.
1883–1885 - Edmund R. Cocke serves on the executive committee of the Virginia State Agricultural Society.
1884 - The overwhelmingly Democratic General Assembly names Edmund R. Cocke chair of Cumberland County's three-member electoral board. He will be reappointed in 1888 and 1890.
1884–1885 - Edmund R. Cocke helps found the Farmers' Assembly of the State of Virginia, a broadly based group that soon demonstrates marked willingness to challenge the status quo.
1885–1889 - Edmund R. Cocke represents the Cumberland County farm club in at least three conferences of the Farmers' Assembly of the State of Virginia.
Summer 1892 - Edmund R. Cocke travels to Omaha, Nebraska, as a Virginia delegate to the national convention of the People's Party. In November, the party's presidential ticket will garner a mere 12,000 votes in Virginia.
1892–1893 - Edmund R. Cocke chairs the executive committee of the National Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, a radical populist group whose membership is plummeting due to the collapse of many of its cooperative agribusiness ventures and its members' resistance to third-party activism.
August 1893 - At the state convention of Virginia's Populist Party, Edmund R. Cocke drafts much of the party platform, which champions free silver and calls for radical reforms in Virginia's fraud-stained election procedures. The convention nominates him for governor.
November 1893 - Congressman Charles Triplett O'Ferrall, a Democrat, wins election as governor, defeating the People's Party candidate Edmund R. Cocke by a margin of 46,701 votes of 216,154 cast.
August 23, 1894 - Edmund R. Cocke serves as temporary chair of the People's Party state convention and, according to press reports, proclaims that anyone who denies the need for reform belongs in a lunatic asylum. He is nominated to run for the U.S. House in the Tenth District.
November 1894 - In the Tenth District, the Democratic incumbent congressman, Henry St. George Tucker, wins reelection in a landslide over his cousin, Edmund R. Cocke, the People's Party candidate.
August 1895 - Edmund R. Cocke attends the Honest Election Conference in Petersburg at which he helps devise plans for a coordinated campaign between Populists and Republicans in the autumn legislative races.
1896 - Edmund R. Cocke serves on a committee orchestrating a cooperative campaign of Virginia Populists and Democrats, and as a delegate to the People's Party convention in Saint Louis, Missouri, he endorses the candidacy of the Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan.
July 1897 - The Virginia People's Party nominates Edmund R. Cocke for lieutenant governor. Fielding no other candidates for statewide office, party officials urge the Democrats to give him the second spot on their ticket, but the Democrats nominate Edward Echols instead.
November 1897 - Edmund R. Cocke loses election as the People's Party candidate for lieutenant governor, garnering just 4.6 percent of the vote. His loss signals the demise of Populism as even a minor influence in Virginia.
March 31, 1898 - Lucia Cary Harrison, Edmund R. Cocke's second wife, dies of childbirth complications that also claim the life of her newborn infant.
August 1900 - Fire destroys Oakland, the cherished ancestral home of Edmund R. Cocke. Beset by cash shortages for twenty years, during which time he has sold parts of the property, Cocke sells another 792 acres sometime during the year.
1919 - Edmund R. Cocke speaks out against the Prohibition movement and its Democratic allies.
February 19, 1922 - After suffering from kidney failure, Edmund R. Cocke dies at Oakland and is buried in the family graveyard.