The Coopers, Ch. 7

Watson Cooper's Obituary from "The Glenwood [Iowa] Opinion" Wednesday, March 26,  1924.  (Vol. LXI, No. 47)

Taps Sounded For Two Civil War Veterans

Watson R. Cooper Who First Saw Mills County in 1852 Passed Away Friday, March 21

Funeral Services Sunday

Watson R. Cooper, pioneer settler and Civil War veteran has answered the final summons from the Great Commander and his spirit has joined the ranks of that omnipotent army which moves ever on into that realm from whose borne no traveler ere returns.

The final summons came last Friday morning to this staunch old pioneer soldier whose rugged virtues and manly characteristics had endeared him to hundreds throughout Mills County which had been his home for upwards of seventy years.

Funeral services were held from the home of his daughter's husband, N. G. Cook on Sunday afternoon.  Rev. F. C. Gonzales, pastor of the Congregational church being in charge.  His comrade, A. D. French made a short appropriate talk and General John Y. Stone, with whom he had served in the war and known almost all of his life delivered a masterful eulogy.  Music was furnished by a quartet consisting of F. B. Kemp, Shirley Gillilland, Harry Hamilton and E. R. Herrick with Mrs. Kemp as pianist.  The pallbearers were: B. N. Maxwell, Fred Workman, Ralph Vinton, M. D. Maxwell, R. W. Rhoades and W . H . Fickel.  Following is a brief sketch.

Watson R. Cooper was born at Joliet, Illinois, February 17, 1844.  From Joliet his father, the Rev. Peter Cooper moved with his family to Kanesville, Iowa, now Council Bluffs passing through Mills County in the month of June, 1852.  From Council Bluffs the family moved to the homestead farm near Henderson, Iowa, where Mr. Cooper lived most of his life.

Mr. Cooper enlisted in the Union army and joined Company F, 15th Iowa, Crocker's Brigade.  He was severely wounded April 6, 1862 in the Battle of Shiloh.  On July 22, 1864 he was captured and taken to Andersonville prison, where he was held three months.  Fortune favored him in being one of Sherman's one thousand soldiers, who were exchanged.  Great was the contrast from his prison life to the next experience which followed; Sherman's famous march to the sea.

On September 21, 1865, the first anniversary of his release from Andersonville, he was united in marriage to Mary Elizabeth Evans.  To this union seven children were born, four passing away in early life.  The oldest daughter, Mrs. N. G. Cook, preceded her father last November, Mrs. F. B. Riggs of Santee, Nebraska and Mrs. F. W. Phillips of Henderson, Iowa, are the surviving daughters.  There are six grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.  The last summons came Friday morning, March 21, 1924, he being 80 years, 1 month and 4 days old.

Mrs. Cooper passed from this life in 1886 and since that time he has made his home with his daughter, spending most of the time in the N. G. Cook home, where he fell asleep, never to awake again in mortality but never to be forgotten by any one who ever knew him and who valued the characteristics of manliness which were so marked on him.  "Wat" Cooper as he was called by those who knew him best was a man among men.  Thus he lived, making friends, doing good, spreading optimism and cheerful hopefulness and serving well his flag and country.  It is to such as he that this nation today owes a debt of gratitude for they laid the corner stone for our present development.  The body was taken to Henderson where interment was made in the family lot in the old home town cemetery.

Eulogy Read by John Y. Stone at the funeral:

I have known Watson R. Cooper for 67 years, though he was rarely called Watson.  It was always "Wat."  We lived with our respective families in the east part of the county, he at the stone quarry near the Nishnabotna River, a mile or two north of where the town of Henderson now stands.  I, on the east side of Silver Creek, five or six miles distant.  In that day this was not a great distance between neighborhoods.  The people came together in various kinds of social gatherings.  The leading kinds of such gatherings, especially in winter, was the old time weekly spelling school.  "Wat" and I struck up an intimate acquaintance that lasted throughout his life.

When I was 18 years of age and he some months younger we enlisted in the army of the Union.  This was in early October, 1861.  Our company was organized in Glenwood.  In the early part of November, the company drove in wagons to Eddyville, then the western terminus of the railroad from Keokuk.  From Eddyville we went to Keokuk on the train.  It was the first time either Wat or I had ever ridden in railway cars.  At Keokuk our regiment was organized as the 15th Iowa regiment of infantry, and our company became Company F.

Early in March, 1862 we moved by steamboat down the Mississippi to Benton Barracks at St. Louis.  Here we received our guns the Springfield rifle, the best then made for war purposes.  Very soon we were put on a steamboat and headed up the Ohio and the Tennessee Rivers t o the scenes of war activities.

At 4 o'clock on the morning of April 6 our boat landed at Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee River.  In less than two hours afterward we heard the sound of battle two or three miles out from the river.  About 8 a.m. we were ordered off the boat to a high bluff much like the bluffs along the Missouri River in this county.  Here we received our ammunition, the old kind, powder and long Minnie bullets fastened together with heavy paper and waxed threads for our muzzle loading guns.  In loading you had to bite off the paper at the powder end of the cartridge and empty the powder into the gun and then ram the bullet down with a steel ramrod.  The caps were carried in a pouch, attached to our belts.  These belts also carried a much larger pouch which held the cartridges.

We were then ordered to the front, and in about an hour were in the midst of the Battle of Shiloh, and in this battle Wat was severely wounded.  In two hours and ten minutes we had lost one-third of our men.  Wat and I were together thereafter throughout all of the campaigns of the regiment, until July 22, 1864, when in a great battle before Atlanta he was captured.  On July 20, when General Hooker was fighting his Battle of Peach Tree Creek our division passed by his left, Hood's right, within a mile or two of the battlefield and moved forward toward Atlanta and took position.  That night we threw up intrenchments [sic] and they were good ones.  The next night we were moved further to left and again intrenched [sic] to the extreme left, leaving a gap of half a mile or more on our left.  The 16th Corps had been ordered to move up and occupy this gap to prevent the enemy from touring our left flank and striking us in the rear.

At noon on the 22nd the Confederate General Hardee, after an all night's continuous march of fifteen miles, swinging clear around our front poured 15,000 men through this gap not yet filled by the 16th Corps.  This turned our left flank and the Confederates swung around it to our rear.  To avoid being captured we were obliged to retreat back toward the right and occupy the works we had constructed on the night of the 20th.  The enemy being now in strong force moved toward these works.  We were thus obliged to jump over barricades and repulse this attack on our rear.  No sooner had we repulsed this attack than a large force, at once moved out from Atlanta, attacked us from the original front.  We then jumped back to the other side of our barricade and defeated this assault.  Here, after the enemy in our original rear had rallied, they attacked again and when that attack was repulsed the forces in the original front came at us again with the same result.  This jumping over process happened seven times.

In the rapidly changing activities of the battle from one position to another, Wat, with a considerable body of men, was cut off from the main body and captured.  Although we finally won, we were unable to recapture our friends, who had been hurried away.  They were taken into Andersonville prison.  Of all the horrors of the war Andersonville was the most terrible.  It was almost impossible to survive.  Hunger, thirst, filth, brutal treatment in diabolical glee were the regular order of management.  Ten who were imprisoned there never fully recovered from their injuries.  There is no record in any modern war of so hideous a hell of torment, as Andersonville.  After about three months of this experience Wat was fortunate in being included in an exchange of prisoners by the opposing generals.  I saw him when he returned and he looked as if he felt that he had escaped from an inferno.

After the closing operation of settlement and the procuring of our discharge, came our march to the sea which was made in the latter part of the year, and which broke the back of the rebellion.  Army life is a pretty severe test of men and of manhood.  Where there are so many different kinds of temperaments and tendencies all imaginably differences in men will be [sic], Wat Cooper was the ideal of cheerfulness.  He laughed at the grumblers, shamed the shirkers, cheered and encouraged the unhappy and despondent and helped the helpless.  No soldier was ever more devoted to his duty.  He was obedient, self reliant, intelligent and brave.

Many instances could be cited of his intrepid conduct during his long service of marches, skirmishes, sieges and battles.  We had no hospitals except crude tents erected in camp or field.  We had no army nurses.  The comrades took care of one another.  The service was unskillful and crude, but it was sincere, devoted and as effective as possible under the circumstances.  Wat Cooper's sympathy with his sick or wounded comrades was boundless and his assistance to them unlimited.

It is difficult for one who knew him as I knew him, and who treasured him as I treasured him to speak concerning him within the bounds of restraint.  It can truly be said of him:  "In war he was a helpful, courageous and joyous comrade, in Peace he was a loyal, unfailing friend and a good and obliging neighbor.

Peter Cooper Jr. is an enigma in my search for family history.  Except for his final few years, he spent his entire life in and around Council Bluffs, but never served in the war like his brothers, even though he was of age, being 23 when the war erupted.  I always thought he was the shy and quiet type, and maybe a little frail, but the following story told by Nelson Mason hints otherwise.

When his sister, Martha, was married to William A. Scott, Peter became enamored with the young teacher’s attractive sister, Louise Scott.  He early encountered obstacles however when her father, Dr. Solomon J. Scott, strenuously objected to the match.  Finding the young man persistent in his suit, the irate physician packed up and moved to Kansas.  Peter followed.  The doctor then removed to Missouri, pursued by the ardent wooer.  Determined not to be out-generaled, the doctor moved to Texas.  Since her father was so unyielding in his attitude toward the young man, Louise wrote Peter it would be best to forget her, and he acquiesced.

In his early life Peter, Jr., farmed successfully in Mills County, Iowa, and for many years owned and operated a tree and shrubbery nursery at Red Oak.  He married Sarah Elswick, and to this union there were born 4 children.  That is all I know about the life of Peter Cooper Jr.  He was not adventurous like his brothers Theophilus and William nor was he patriotic like his brothers Isaac and Richard Watson.  Even his youngest brother Cornelius ventured to Colorado and finally Arizona, but Peter Jr. stayed home.  Being the oldest after Theo flew the coop and his sister Martha passed away, it might be that he had the responsibility to take care of his father in later years. 

Peter Jr.’s son William long remained in the old home locality, and in 1927, with his wife operated a restaurant at Silver City, in Mills County.  He was later engaged in business at Oakland, passing on in 1939 at the home of his sister, Mae Riggs, in Tacoma,.  So far as known he was the last of the Peter and Ann Cooper line, bearing the family name.