Early Life and Arrival in East Florida
Cooley was born in Maryland in 1783; little else is known about him prior to 1813. Cooley has been referred to as William Cooley Jr., William Coolie, William Colee and William Cooly.
Cooley arrived in East Florida in 1813, during a joint campaign of Tennessee and Georgia forces. Some sources give credit to the hypothesis that Cooley fought with the Tennessee Volunteers under Colonel John Williams; other sources say he was a lieutenant in the Georgia Militia, fighting under Colonel Samuel Alexander from Georgia. Cooley acquired property in Girt's Landing on the St. Marys River, close to where the military units crossed East Florida that same year. Later, he went to the west bank of the St. Johns River, settling in an area 30 miles (48 km) south of modern Jacksonville.
Cooley later moved to Alligator Pond (near present-day Lake City, Florida), where he set up a farm and traded with the local Seminole tribe led by Chief Micanopy. The territory of East Florida was formally transferred from Spain to the United States in 1819, under the Adams-Onis Treaty. In 1820, Spanish merchant Don Fernando de la Maza Arredondo began settlement of a 280,000-acre (1,130 km2) claim in the Alachua territory, which had been granted to him by King Ferdinand VII of Spain. Cooley negotiated with Don Fernando on behalf of the displaced Indians but was unsuccessful. Cooley moved away in 1823—possibly to escape the Spanish influence—to the north bank of the New River.
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