John Cooper was born on October 24, 1833, in Coopers Plains, New York, to John Cooper and Elizabeth Evans. His father was a farmer who owned $41,550 of real estate in 1850. Cooper grew up in Erwin, New York, and attended school in Easton, Pennsylvania. He enrolled at Lafayette College and spent three years there before transferring to Amherst College in September 1853. He graduated the following spring and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1857. He spent the next two years studying medicine in Paris, France, before establishing a medical practice in New York City in October 1859.

 

Cooper joined the Union army during the Civil War and received a commission as a surgeon. He served on General John C. Frémont’s staff in 1862, and Union officials placed him in charge of the army hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1863. By early 1864, he was working in New Orleans, and on May 13, 1864, he became a surgeon in the 2^nd Louisiana (Union) Cavalry. He fell ill with malaria sometime that summer, and by September, he was reportedly “extremely emaciated and feeble and…unfit for duty.” He mustered out on September 7, 1864. He eventually recovered, and by early 1865, he was serving as a staff surgeon with the 17^th Army Corps.

 

Cooper returned to his family home in Erwin after the war and resumed his medical practice. He moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, around 1867 and began working as a “druggist.” Cooper married Ophelia Bronson on December 19, 1867, and they had seven children, including: Alice, born around 1869; John, born around 1874; Randolph, born around 1877; Mary, born around 1879; and Harley, born around 1880. By 1870, he owned $8,300 of personal property, and he employed at least one white domestic servant.

 

The family returned moved to New York City in 1870, then to Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1876, and they returned to Erwin in 1879. His health declined in the late 1870s, and he applied for a federal pension in September 1879. He moved to Corning, New York, in the late 1800s, and settled in Buffalo, New York, around 1903. He died there of cerebral thrombus on July 11, 1904.

 

Image: John Cooper (courtesy Library of Congress)

SOURCES