Early Life and Family
James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, to William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper, the eleventh child of twelve children, most of whom died during infancy or childhood. He was descended from James Cooper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, who emigrated to American colonies in 1679. He and his wife were Quakers who purchased plots of land in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Seventy five years after his arrival in America his great-grandson, William, was born on December 2, 1754, father of the author James Cooper. Cooper lived the first year of his life in New Jersey. Shortly after his first birthday, his family moved to Cooperstown, New York, a community founded by his father, who was a United States Congressman. Their house was in the wilderness on the shore of Otsego Lake, an area in central New York that was surrounded by the Iroquois of the Six Nations.
Shortly after the American Revolutionary War, Cooper's father, William Cooper, purchased several thousand acres of land in upstate New York along the head-waters of the Susquehanna River. By 1788, William had selected and surveyed the site where Cooperstown would be established. He erected a home on the shore of Otsego lake, and in the autumn of 1790 and, after moving belongings, servants and carpenters to the location, he began construction of what would become Otsego Hall. Otsego Hall was completed in 1799 when James was ten years old.
At the age of 13, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but, after inciting a dangerous prank that involved blowing up another student's door, Cooper was expelled in his third year without completing his degree. Disenchanted with college, Cooper obtained work in 1806 as a sailor and at the age of 17 joined the crew of a merchant vessel. By 1811, he obtained the rank of midshipman in the fledgling United States Navy, conferred to him on an officer's warrant signed by Thomas Jefferson.
At twenty Cooper inherited a fortune from his father. On January 1, 1811, at age twenty one, he married Susan Augusta de Lancey, at Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York. the daughter of a wealthy family that remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. They had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, was a writer on nature, female suffrage, and other topics. She and her father often edited each other’s work. Paul Fenimore Cooper (1899–1970) a writer during the 20th century, was a great-grandson of James Cooper.
Read more about this topic: James Fenimore Cooper
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or family:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“I have scarcely felt greater pain in my life than on learning yesterday from Bob’s letter, that you had failed to enter Harvard University. And yet there is very little in it, if you will allow no feeling of discouragement to seize, and prey upon you.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Parenting is not logical. If it were, we would never have to read a book, never need a family therapist, and never feel the urge to call a close friend late at night for support after a particularly trying bedtime scene. . . . We have moments of logic, but life is run by a much larger force. Life is filled with disagreement, opposition, illusion, irrational thinking, miracle, meaning, surprise, and wonder.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)