William Cooley - Politician

Politician

Cooley befriended Captain William Bunce, a retailer striving to keep Indians in the area, as they represented a source of cheap labor. He became involved again in local politics, this time against General Jesup, who wanted to remove all Indians from Florida. Judge Steele, a newcomer from Connecticut, was Cooley's ally in this fight.

By 1840, he lived in Leon County, Florida, with a single slave. Cooley was living near the Homosassa River, where the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 allowed the distribution of 160-acre (65 ha) land grants. His leadership enabled him to get not only his own permit but permits for 28 other settlers. A lengthy correspondence with the General Land Office was eventually concluded satisfactorily for him and the other settlers. In 1843, he was a candidate for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives for the newly created Hernando County, but he lost to James Gibbons. Two years later, he became the first postmaster in Homosassa and County Commissioner of Fisheries. He sold his land grant to Senator David Levy Yulee sequentially between 1846 and 1847 and moved back to Tampa.

From 1848 to 1860, Cooley acquired several properties in the Tampa region, including one at Worth's Harbor. By 1850, he lived with seven slaves and was a Captain of the "Silver Grays"—a militia for the home defense of Tampa in the 1850s. He owned a general store in the city, eventually sold to a member of the Tampa Masonic Lodge. He was nominated Port Warden of Tampa in 1853. By 1855, Cooley had become a leader in local politics; he was the chairman at a meeting of the Democratic Party in Tampa, with sixty-five members enrolled, on August 4, 1855. He was brought in as an alternate councilman for two months in the first Tampa council, served a full-year term beginning in February 1857, and returned in 1861 for another full term. Cooley estimated his personal wealth at $10,060 in 1860.