William Cooper was an American jurist and merchant. He served as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from New York for two terms. He was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Otsego County.
Background
William Cooper was born on December 02, 1754 in Byberry, Pennsylvania, United States, where his great-grandfather, James, coming from Stratford-on-Avon in 1679, purchased a plantation in addition to other land in and around Philadelphia. He was the son of English Quaker parents, James Cooper and Hannah (Hibbs) Cooper.
Career
Cooper lived in Burlington, New Jersey, until he settled in 1789 on the shores of Otsego Lake, and founded the town that bears his name. When he was ready to start for this wilderness in central New York, his wife refused to budge from the chair where she was sitting and holding her infant son, James. Picking up the chair, he placed it, with its occupants, on the waiting wagon. In securing tenants for his land he adopted the policy of instalment payments instead of annual rents, on the theory that a man having a proprietary interest would stick to the soil in spite of hardships. In lean years he accepted payments in maple sugar and wood-ash; to improve the morals in a “rough and ready” community, he persuaded Trinity Church (New York) to grant $1, 500 for a church in Cooperstown; through donations, headed by his own, he erected a seminary; by judicious use of a little rum he built roads and bridges; he furnished the money to buy a printing-press and type for a newspaper. An advertisement in the Otsego Herald in December 1797 showed that he was selling land not only for himself but also for the Hartwick, the Hillington, the Jew, and the Schuyler patents. He later bought land both in the northern and the western parts of the state. In his real-estate transactions Alexander Hamilton was his attorney.
Defeated once but twice elected to Congress (1795-97; 1799 - 1801), he was the first judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Otsego County in 1791. An ardent Federalist, he always campaigned next to the ground, was said to have won votes by embracing “the toothless and the decrepit, ” and after the election of 1792, when votes from Otsego and other counties were, at the instigation of Aaron Burr, rejected by the official canvassers in order to elect Clinton governor, he was charged, in a petition presented to the state legislature, with unduly influencing the voters in Otsego County, a charge later dismissed as frivolous and vexatious. Cooper died in Albany as the result of a blow struck from behind, by a political opponent.
Achievements
Politics
William Cooper was a member of the Federalist Party and favored a stronger central government.
Views
Quotations:
"I have settled more acres than any other man in America. There are forty thousand souls holding directly or indirectly under me. ”
Connections
On December 12, 1775, Cooper married Elizabeth Fenimore of Rancocus.