Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/396

 COOPER

COOPER

the same A-ear became professor of mechanical engineering in Tulane university; Drury W., born Aug. 7, 1872, was graduated from Rutgers in 1892, and from the New York law school in 1894; and Lane, born Dec. 14, 1875, was graduated at Rutgers in 1896 and took his M.A. degree in a post-graduate course at Yale in 1898. Dr. Cooper received the degree of J. CD. from Jena in 1873, that of S.T.D. from Columbia in 1874, and that of LL.D. from Tulane in 1895. Besides many articles for the Danville Quarterly Review, of which he was editor, 1861-65, the Bihliotlieca Sacra, of which he was a corresponding editor, and numerous other periodicals, he is the au- thor of The Loynlty denuoKJeil hy the Present Crisis (1862); The Life of the Bev. George Duffield, D.D. (1890).

COOPER, James, senator, was born in Fred- erick county. Md., May 8, 1810. He attended St. Mary's college and was graduated at "Washington college. Pa., in 1832. He was admitted to the bar in 1834 and began practice in Gettysburg, Pa. He was a representative in the 26th and 27th congresses, 1839^3. He was a member of the state legislature 18 11 1 8, being speaker of the assembly in 1847. He removed to Pottsville, Pa., and was .'Attorney general of the state in 1848 and United States senator, 1849-55. He after- M-ard settled in Frederick City, Md., and in 1861 commanded the Union volunteers in Maryland, being commissioned brigadier general, May 17, 1861. He subsequently commanded Camp Cliase, near Columbus, Ohio, until his death which occurred there March 28, 1863.

COOPER, James Fenimore, author, was born in Burlington, N.J., Sept. 15, 1789; son of Wil- liam and Elizabeth (Fenimore), grandson of James and Hannah (Hibbs), great-grand- son of William and Marj' (Groome), and fi eat^ grandson of James and Hester Cooper of Stratford- on Avon, England, %\ ho ari'ived in America about 1679. On Nov. 10, 1790, Wil- liam Cooper removed A\ith his family to Ins land at the head of the Susquehanna river near Ostego lake and started a settlement which afterward became Coopers- town, N.Y. Here James passed his early child- hood watching the almost unbroken wilderness grow slowlv into civilization. In 1795 a school- house was built, and after exhausting its meagre

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educational advantages he went to Albany, where he received private instruction from the rector of St. Peter's church, a graduate of an English university. On the death of his brother in 1802, Cooper entered Yale college, then at its lowest ebb of scholarship, and the fun-loving boy paid less attention to his studies than to play. A frolic engaged in during his third year led to his dismissal from college and it was decided that he should enter the. navy. There being at the time no naval school he went before the mast, sailing frem New York, Oct. 16, 1806, in the ship Sterliwj. After a stormy passage of forty daj^s they reached London, where the young sailor iraproved his opportunity to look about the metropolis. The cargo being discharged and a new one taken on they proceeded to the Straits of Gibraltar, re- turned to England, and ag-'in sailed for America, reaching Philadelphia on Sept. 18, 1807. On Jan. 1, 1808, he was commissioned midshipman, U.S. navy, and in the following February was ordered to report to the commanding officer in New York. After serving for a while on the Vesuvius he was sent with a party under the command of Lieutenant Woolsey to Lake Ontario for the purpose of building at Oswego a brig of sixteen guns to command the lake. In the spring of 1809 when the brig was launched, the danger of war with Great Britain, which had been consid- ered imminent, had passed, and Cooper visited Niagara Falls with Lieutenant Woolsey. On June 10, 1809, he was left in cliarge of the gun- boats on Lake Champlain, and on September 27 he was granted a furlough for the purpose of taking a trip to Europe, but the plan was aban- doned. On Nov. 13, 1809, he was ordered to the Wasp, and served on that vessel until Maj- 9, 1810, %vhen a twelve months' furlough was granted him. He was married on Jan. 1, 1811, to Susan Augusta, daughter of John Peter De Lancey of Mamaroneck, Westchester county, N.Y. His wife's ancestors were Huguenots, who fled from France at the close of the 17th centurj' and set- tled in Westchester county. They sympathized with the king during the Revolutionary war, and several of them were British officers, Coojier re- signed his commission in the navy. May 6, 1811, and after living with his father-in-law at Heath- cote Hall, Mamaroneck, N.Y., for about eighteen months he rented a cottage near by and lived there for a year. Returning in 1814 to his child- hood home at Cooperstown he began to erect a large stone dwelling, but in 1817 was persuaded by his wife to return to Westchester and the un- finished structure was destroj'ed by fire in 1823. He made his home on the old Argevine farm at Scarsdale until about 1822. There six children were born, five daughters and one son, the first child dying in infancy. Cooper showed no signs