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Son of Isaiah Cooper 1778–1849
and
Elizabeth Montier 1779–1845
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Married Millie Crowder 25 Nov 1832, Pike, IL.
Milly was the Daughter of Phillip Crowder 1778–1871
and
Charlotte Robbins 1782–1866
William and Millie had 1 Daughter:
Rachel Emillia Cooper 1833–1894
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Married Mary Ann Crosier (1820–1856); 28 June 1840 Pike, IL
William and Mary Ann had 7 children:
Charlotte Elizabeth Cooper 1842–1911
Enoch S. Cooper 1843–1922
Jane Ann Cooper 1846–1928
Sarah Marguerite Cooper 1848–1922
James C. Cooper 1851–1919
Mariah Cooper 1853–1909
Isaiah Matheny Cooper 1855–1928
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Mary Ann Crosier 1820–1856
Birth 1820, Ohio, USA
Death 1856, Polk County, Oregon, USA
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William Shepherd “Bill” Cooper
1813-1888
[Rewritten July 2013 by Don Rivara]
William Shepherd Cooper was...
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Son of Isaiah Cooper 1778–1849
and
Elizabeth Montier 1779–1845
=====
Married Millie Crowder 25 Nov 1832, Pike, IL.
Milly was the Daughter of Phillip Crowder 1778–1871
and
Charlotte Robbins 1782–1866
William and Millie had 1 Daughter:
Rachel Emillia Cooper 1833–1894
=====
Married Mary Ann Crosier (1820–1856); 28 June 1840 Pike, IL
William and Mary Ann had 7 children:
Charlotte Elizabeth Cooper 1842–1911
Enoch S. Cooper 1843–1922
Jane Ann Cooper 1846–1928
Sarah Marguerite Cooper 1848–1922
James C. Cooper 1851–1919
Mariah Cooper 1853–1909
Isaiah Matheny Cooper 1855–1928
=====
Mary Ann Crosier 1820–1856
Birth 1820, Ohio, USA
Death 1856, Polk County, Oregon, USA
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William Shepherd “Bill” Cooper
1813-1888
[Rewritten July 2013 by Don Rivara]
William Shepherd Cooper was a son of Isaiah Cooper [1778-1849] and Elizabeth Montier Cooper [1779-about 1845]. We know this from a transcription of the Isaiah Cooper Bible late in the possession of Robert Bennett Hewitt. William was born in the log cabin of his parents at the settlement of Tullytown, Springville Township, Clark County, Indiana. The War of 1812 was in progress. His father was serving in a company of mounted rangers that roamed over Indiana Territory patrolling against Indian attacks. Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnees led an alliance of Indians allied to Great Britain; these were savagely attacking the frontier settlements of the United States. At the time of William’s birth, his father had gone A.W.O. L. for two weeks. It could have been that Isaiah wanted to be with his wife when the child was born, but that may be too romantic of a conjecture.
Late in 1817 the Cooper family moved from Clark County to unsettled land on the White River that Isaiah had seen while serving as a ranger. Isaiah was one of the founders of Owen County and the county seat, Spencer. He had gone earlier without his family to claim land, build a cabin, clear land, and plant a late crop of corn. Then he returned to Clark County to bring his family to their new home.
Just before frost the family quickly harvested the immature corn. It was put to dry in the loft of the cabin, and it turned a bit moldy. Not quite four, “Billy” would have slept nights with the smell of moldy corn. But Isaiah did not dry all of the corn. Most of the early settlers made corn whiskey from a portion of their crop; Isaiah had a lust for the product, which would destroy his life and the lives of his family in Owen County.
Isaiah established a ferry across the White River at the new county seat of Spencer. The 21 acres that he donated to establish the town of Spencer is now Cooper Park in that town. Until he was thirteen, Bill would have participated in the farming and ferry operations of the family at Spencer. His brother, Enoch, was eight years older. The brothers established a bond during this period that never eroded. They would live near each other for the rest of their lives.
By 1826, William’s father had morphed from a dynamic leader of frontier life into a drunk. His neighbors exercised the right to impeach and threw him out of office as a justice of the peace. William would have experienced a sense of ostracism from the community due to his father’s bad behavior.
In 1827 the disgraced family left Owen County and was one of the first families to settle Derry Township, Pike County, Illinois Territory. Bill was thirteen at the time of the move. There he spent his teenage years.
In 1832 the Black Hawk War broke out in Illinois when Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk and Fox tribes defied U.S. authority by settling east of the Mississippi in Illinois. Bill was eighteen when the Coopers’ minister, Rev. Ozias Hale, formed a company to fight in the war. He was a private in the company as was his brother-in-law Benjamin Shinn. His brother, Enoch Cooper, was elected sergeant. The war climaxed in the Battle of Bad Axe in southern Wisconsin. Bill returned home a war veteran at age eighteen.
A few months later he married Milly Crowder, a Pike County girl, on 25 November 1832. He turned nineteen a few weeks later, and he became a father on 31 August 1833, at the birth of his daughter, Rachel Emillia Cooper. He likely became a widower as well on that date at the young age of nineteen.
Bill probably returned to live with his parents so his mother to care for his daughter. There was no need to hurry into a second marriage to provide a mother for the child. It was almost seven years before he married again. On 28 June 1840, he married Mary Ann Crozier [also spelled Crosiar]. In Pike County Mary Ann gave birth to Charlotte Elizabeth Cooper, 27 May 1842; Enoch S. Cooper, 1 October 1843. [Note that his first son was named for his brother Enoch]
Two of Bill’s sisters, Mary Cooper Matheny and Rachel Cooper Matheny, and their families had traveled to Oregon across the plains in 1843. Ever since then, Bill, his father and his brothers had talked of joining them there. His mother probably had been against uprooting and making the risky journey, but she died in 1845. In 1846 Isaiah sold his farm to finance the reuniting of his family in Oregon. He and his four sons and their families, including Bill’s, left Pike County, Illinois, in the spring of 1846 and headed for Independence, Missouri, the major starting point for a crossing of the plains.
Mary Ann was pregnant while crossing the plains. Her ninth month would have been spent under the hot August sun, braving sagebrush and alkali dust as the Oregon Trail followed the Snake River. In the Grand Ronde Valley of present-day eastern Oregon, she gave birth to a daughter, Jane Ann Cooper, 1 September 1846. When the Coopers reached Oregon, they headed south on the east side of the Cascade Mountains to the Tygh Valley, where the Barlow Road had recently opened as a way to bring wagons into the Willamette Valley. Waiting for them at the gate to the road were two of Mary Cooper Matheny’s sons, Bill’s nephews. The sons guided the members of the Cooper party and a few others to Matheny’s Ferry and the town of Atchison [later named Wheatland], both founded by Mary and her husband, Daniel Matheny.
At Atchison, the Mathenys had built small log cabins for their kin to use until they could take up land claims of their own. All that winter of 1846-1847 the Cooper clan lived together at Atchison. In the spring the men navigated down the Willamette River to Oregon City to file land claims.
Bill and Mary Ann’s first land claim was directly across the Willamette River from Mary and Daniel Matheny’s claim. Two of Daniel and Mary’s children also lived on land claims in the low-lying bottom land on the east side of the river. But the area proved prone to flooding, so Bill and Mary Ann looked for higher land. They filed a new land claim for a square mile of land at the base of the Eola Hills on the Yamhill-Polk county line. This land lay about two miles south of that of his sister, Rachel Cooper Matheny.
In June of 1849 Bill, his brothers Enoch and John, their father, Isaiah Cooper, and Henry Matheny, Rachel’s husband, followed the rush of gold seekers to California. The women and children went with the men. Daniel Matheny and three of his sons, and Isaiah Cooper, Jr., had gone to the gold fields the previous November and returned to Oregon with a great deal of gold in the spring of 1849.
In California the Coopers worked claims two miles west of the current location of the community of Pilot Hill in El Dorado County on a creek that feeds into the American River. Today that ravine is called Cooper Canyon.
In the fall of 1849 an epidemic of camp fever permeated the people working the canyon. Old Isaiah Cooper, his son John Cooper, his son-in-law Henry Matheny, and Henry and Rachel Matheny’s daughter, Sarah Jane Matheny Layson, died. Reportedly they were buried in the cemetery by Sutter’s Mill, now the town of Coloma. No grave markers remain on those graves. Bill took his family back to Oregon in 1850 by ship; they traveled on the Tarquina.
In the Willamette Valley Bill and Mary Ann had several more children: Sarah Marguerite Cooper, 1848; James C. Cooper, 1851; Mariah Cooper, 3 May 1853, and Isaiah Matheny Cooper, 11 August 1855. The youngest son was named for a son of Mary and Daniel Matheny, who had been Bill and Mary Ann’s neighbor while they lived on the claim on the east side of the Willamette River.
Bill had been a young father, and became a young grandfather as well. 18 June 1850, his sixteen-year-old daughter, Rachel Cooper, married Ruben Cave. 1 April 1851, at the age of thirty-seven, Bill became a grandfather with the birth of Benjamin William Cave. Many more grandchildren would follow.
In the late summer of 1856, an epidemic of cholera hit the area where the Cooper and Matheny families lived. There were several deaths in the family. Mary Cooper Matheny and three or four of her grandchildren died, and Mary Ann Crozier Cooper was a victim as well. Bill was a widower for the second time at age forty-two. He would never marry again. Isaiah Matheny Cooper was only a year old when his mother died. Bill sent him to the home of Enoch and Esther Cooper, and they reared the child. Even after Esther Cooper died in 1865, Isaiah remained with his Uncle Enoch.
In the early 1870’s there was a sizeable exodus of the people of the Willamette Valley to “the Palouse Country” in eastern Washington Territory. To move there with his children, Bill apparently just abandoned his farm in the Willamette Valley because it was sold for $11.25 in back taxes in 1875. His brother Enoch and his children also made the move. Bill settled on a claim next door to that of his daughter, Mariah Walling. His unmarried son, James C. Cooper, lived with him at the time of the 1880 Census. Three of Bill’s children remained behind in Oregon: Rachel Cooper Cave Athey, Enoch S. Cooper, and Isaiah Matheny Cooper. Whereas Bill was unlucky with his wives, he was very fortunate with his children. None of them died during his lifetime.
In 1877 the Nez Perce War broke out in the area. When reports of attacks on white settlers came, the farm families panicked. Rumors were rampant. Supposedly Chief Moses of the Spokane Indians was coming south to ally with the warring Nez Perce. Everyone fled to the towns or the forts. Bill and his children found refuge in Fort Walla Walla. In their absence, the Nez Perce burned the house and outbuildings at the farm of Bill’s daughter, Mariah Walling. If they also burned Bill’s home next door, there is no documentation of the event.
Bill lived his last thirteen years in Whitman County. In 1885 his brother Enoch died. A great-grandson of Bill, Clarence O. Walling, was in possession of two telegrams, one dated 4 June 1888 and sent to “W.S. Blake, care of Mr. Moore in Egypt, Lincoln County, Oregon.” The telegram, sent by Bill’s son James C. Cooper, stated “If you want to see your grandfather alive come immediately, as he wants to see you.” The other telegram is a reply, “Can’t come immediately-will be there about the eighth—W.F. Blake.”
Bill died 14 June 1888, at the home of his daughter, Mariah Walling, at the age of seventy-four. He was embalmed by John S. Noble of Colfax, WA. He is believed to have been buried in the cemetery at Colfax because that is where the Wallings are buried.
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William S. “Bill” Cooper
His son, James C. Cooper, was executor of his estate. In Bill’s estate papers, his heirs were listed as:
Rachel Athe [sic], aged about 54 years, of Polk County, Oregon
Charlotte Blake, aged about 45 years, of Lincoln County, W. T. [Washington Territory]
Enoch S. Cooper, aged about 44 years, of Yamhill County, Oregon
Jane Ann Andrews, aged about 40 years, of Whitman County, W.T.
Sarah Kirkwood, age about 39 years, of Whitman County, W.T.
Isaiah Cooper, age about 28, of Yamhill County, Oregon [He was 33.]
Mariah Walling, age about 35 years, of Whitman County, W.T.
James C. Cooper, age about 37 years, of Lincoln County, W.T.
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Clarence O. Walling was also in possession of Bill’s obituary from the newspaper in Colfax, WA:
A PIONEER’S DEATH
William S. Cooper died at Wallings, about 10 miles northeast of Colfax on Thursday last, June 14th. Mr. Cooper was 75 years of age and enjoyed the distinction of having lived in several states, but never having moved into one. He was born in 1813 in Clark County, Indiana. In 1827 he moved to Illinois, and in 1846 to the territory of Oregon. In 1849 he went to California and then returned to Oregon. [From this point, the article was torn and unreadable]
None of Bill’s descendants carry the Cooper surname. Of his three sons, James did not marry; Enoch had two sons, neither of whom married; Isaiah’s only son never married.
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