The Coopers, Ch. 1

 My earliest ancestors in this country are the Coopers and the Scotts.  The Scotts came by way of Nova Scotia and the Coopers came by way of England.  This is the story of the Coopers.  It begins with my great, great, great grandfather, Peter Cooper and his wife, Ann King.

When I first began my hobby of genealogy it was just a fact gathering process.  Census records, military records, city directories etc., just dry facts without color or personality.  I’m not sure when all that changed for me, but it did.  Somewhere along the way I became very interested in history.  I think it was a desire to know and understand what my predecessors had to deal with in their everyday lives.  I wanted to know what their surrounding were like, what they ate for breakfast or lunch, and what their daily activities were.  Were they happy or sad, did they attend church on Sundays, were they involved in the politics of their day, what did they have for dinner?  Just who were these people who came, lived their short window of time, and passed into history.

In my travels, I made it a point to visit many of the places they lived.  Cemeteries and genealogical centers became the focus of many of my travels and I have visited many of them.  I have seen the haunts and homes of my ancestors from one end of this country to the other and it has been a fun and fascinating journey.  It’s a strange feeling to stand where your ancestors stood, to occupy the same space they occupied many years before.

                                                                   Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper is one of those people.  I have been to his birthplace in England and his cemetery plot in Glenwood, Iowa.  When I began my research, all I knew was that he arrived in America in the 1830’s with his wife Ann (King) Cooper.  I knew that he was newly married, having departed the old country (England) on his wedding day.  At least, that is what family verbal history told me.  I wondered what had driven this stonemason to abandon his home and family and travel across the North Atlantic Ocean to a new and, at least to him, an unknown world.  I know that England, in the early 1830’s was a place of labor unrest.  The new reaping machines were putting people out of work, there was a recession in progress, and jobs of any kind were difficult to find.  Wages had been deteriorating for several years and, therefore, labor was cheap.

In this country, during that same period, Andrew Jackson was president and he had just signed the Indian Removal Act, which effectively opened up the frontier for mass settlement.  Coupled with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, an era of unrestrained growth along the eastern seaboard demanded the talents of many stonemasons.  Enter, Peter Cooper.

Whether it was due to the tough economic environment at home, or the promise of a growing American economy, one or the other was enough enticement for Peter and Ann to make the move.  I can just picture the young couple, in their early twenties, madly in love and facing a future at home with few opportunities.  In England, even marriage would have been out of the question without a viable means of support.  They must have had many conversations about their future before making the decision to emigrate.  It would mean leaving family and friends and giving up their familiar surroundings for a fresh start.  I wonder how much they had heard of America or if friends or family had preceded them and awed them with tales of unlimited possibilities.  When they departed, were they reaching for the “brass ring” or were they escaping a dismal future, or both?

Initially, Peter and Ann Cooper settled in New York, where Peter and his brother opened a rock quarry to supply the growing needs of the metropolis.  I had been told that Peter and Ann arrived, accompanied by Ann’s mother and two of her sisters (Charlotte, & Sarah), and a brother (John).  It was only later, after reading papers found in the family archives, that I discovered that Peter’s brother, William, was also with them in New York.  When I finally found the records of Peter and Ann’s arrival on the 12^th of September 1831, on the ship “Minerva,” there is no mention of any other members of the Cooper or King families being with them.  Peter was only 24 years old and Ann was just 21, what an exciting adventure for this young couple.  I eventually discovered the manifest of the ship “Cumberland” that brought Peter’s brother William to America on the 14^th of November 1832; a full year after Peter and Ann had arrived.

The fact that their first child Martha was born in the Bronx, (a rural country setting at the time), indicates that Peter moved out of the tenement district as soon as he could, but not before Ann’s mother was stricken by the disease that thrived in the filth and squalor of the inner city.  Ann’s mother was an early victim of the 1832 cholera epidemic in New York City, and died there shortly after their arrival.

One can only imagine the deplorable rat infested conditions the newlyweds stepped into in September of 1831.  It was not unusual for each tenement building to have its own cistern, septic pit, and trash dump in the back yard, all within close proximity to each other, and the “five corners” area, where most new immigrants found lodging, was considered a dangerous place for anybody not living there.  New York City was a bawdy seaport town in the 1830’s, and not a place to raise a family.

Peter and his brother William noticed the abundance of hard stone lying near the surface in and around the city, and recognized the opportunity they had for supplying stone for the buildings going up in the city.  Together, they opened a stone quarry where they were kept busy for the next couple of years supplying stone for the construction of Girard College.  During this time their first child Martha C. was born on the 18^th of May, 1832 in the Bronx section of New York City.  Given the arrival dates and the birthdates, either Martha C. was a preemie or she had been conceived aboard the Minerva during the transatlantic crossing!

Next: Ch. 2