Cooper Cemetery is a small cemetery about seven miles southwest of Fairbury.
Over 300 people have been buried in this cemetery, which is also the final resting place of many early settlers south of Fairbury. The oldest adult gravestone dates back to 1840.
The story of this cemetery began with the initial purchase of the farmland from the U.S. Government. On January 19, 1846, Jonathan Moore (1816-1850) purchased the 160 acres in the southwest quarter of Section 29 in Indian Grove township. Jonathan Moore was one of the sons of Jonathan J. Moore and Sarah Patterson. He was born in North Carolina before the family moved to Overton County, Tennessee.
Valentine and Rachael Darnall became the first white settlers in Livingston County in 1830. They built a log cabin south of Fairbury.
One year later, in 1831, the Jonathan J. Moore family members started to emigrate from Overton County, Tennessee, to farms south of Fairbury. Several sons, including Jonathan Moore, came at the same time. In 1842, Jonathan Moore married Margaret Popejoy (1826-1850) in Livingston County. She was born in Ohio. He was 26, and she was 16 when they married. They had three children.
The California Gold Rush started in 1848 when gold was discovered at Sutter's Creek. Jonathan Moore caught the gold bug and began to travel west to California to seek his fortune. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 33 in Laramie, Wyoming, on his way to California. Just four months later, his wife, Margaret, died at the age of 24 in Indian Grove Township.
Cooper Cemetery is named after James Cooper. He was born in 1809 in North Carolina and married Susanna M. Travis (1808-1867) in 1830 in Tennessee. At the time of their marriage, he was 21, and she was 22. James and Susanna Cooper had seven children.
In 1832, James and Susanna Cooper had twin sons named Jeremiah Franklin "Frank" Cooper and James Madison Cooper. They were born in Overton County, Tennessee. In 1834, James and Susanna Cooper moved their family from Tennessee to Belle Prairie township south of Fairbury. Their mode of transportation was by a wagon drawn by oxen, which made their travel necessarily slow. The average daily distance traveled by an oxen-drawn wagon was about 13 miles per day. It likely took them about 35 days to make the 450-mile journey from Overton County to Fairbury. When they arrived, they built a log cabin and settled in Section Five of Belle Prairie Township. Frank Cooper would have been two years old when his family made the long journey.
Shortly after arriving in Belle Prairie Township, James and Susanna Cooper had a daughter, Margaret Cooper, born on November 27, 1834. Margaret Cooper was the first white child born in what is now Belle Prairie Township.
When he was six years old, around 1838, Frank Cooper started attending country school. His first school was a log cabin with a big fireplace, puncheon floor, and hewed board seats.
In his later years, Frank Cooper recounted that when his family first arrived south of Fairbury, there were only four other families in his early recollection. They lived at the "Grove" and were Uncle Barney Phillips and family, Uncle Martin Darnall and family, the first white settler, James Spence and brothers, and Richard Moore and family. During winter, snow would drift through the cracks in their log cabins. The food was homemade, and jeans furnished the only outside-wearing apparel, while underclothing, overcoats, and overshoes were unknown. Despite this, there was not much sickness, a little ague now and then, but doctors and medicines were almost unknown. Bloomington, Ottawa, and Chicago were the trading points. A trip to one of these points was made about once a year, chiefly to procure salt.
In 1840, the first burial of an adult took place in Cooper Cemetery. This grave was for Elizabeth Right Harp – Moore (1801-1840), per the FindaGrave.com website.
Livingston County was created in 1837. No trials were held until 1840. The first case ever held in Livingston County was in 1840. William Popejoy asked Isaac Wilson if he could rent his horse for a trip to Bloomington and back. Mr. Popejoy agreed to care for, feed and shod the horse, plus pay Mr. Wilson $1. Mr. Popejoy made the trip to Bloomington and returned the horse to Mr. Wilson. Unfortunately, the horse died soon after it was returned home.
Mr. Wilson sued Mr. Popejoy and alleged that Mr. Popejoy had not taken proper care of his horse and requested $300 in damages. Mr. Popejoy retained 31-year-old Abraham Lincoln as his attorney. Isaac Wilson retained Stephen A. Douglas as his attorney. William Popejoy is the third great-grandfather of Ray Popejoy, founder of Popejoy Plumbing, Heating, Electric, and Geothermal company in Fairbury.
From a legal standpoint, Abe Lincoln lost the case, but he got the damages significantly reduced that Mr. Popejoy had to pay Mr. Wilson. Since Livingston County was founded in 1837, no permanent courthouse had been built by 1840. The court hearings were held in a cabin owned by Henry Weed. The jury deliberated on a pile of sawn logs on the banks of the Vermilion River in Pontiac. James Cooper served on this jury.
Mr. Cooper was a mechanic and farmer and, for some years, bore the reputation of being the best hand with the broad axe in the county. He made many chairs, spinning wheels, and looms, which he sold to his neighbors. Many of the chairs he made were still used when the 1909 Livingston County history book was written.
In 1847, James Cooper took his son, Frank Cooper, on a Chicago trip. The little town of Chicago looked big to them and was already a trading center, even though no railroads were in Chicago yet. The chief hotels were the Sherman House and the American Temperance House. Mr. Cooper and his father camped on the streets in their covered wagon, as did hundreds of others trading in Chicago.
In 1853, Frank Cooper married Eliza Louisa Davis (1837-1906). She was born in Indiana. He was 21, and she was 16 when they married in Livingston County. They had 15 children. In 1864, Frank and Eliza Cooper settled on a farm in Section 29 of Indian Grove Township. They built a log cabin. He owned 125 acres valued at $5,000 in 1878. That amount would be equivalent to $160,500 in today’s dollars. Frank served as director of the country school in his area for many years.
Eliza Cooper, Frank Cooper's wife, died in 1867 at the age of 57. Two years later, in 1869, Frank Cooper married Nancy Margaret Williams. In 1870, pioneer settler James Cooper died at the age of 60. The 1909 Livingston County history book noted that James Cooper was buried in the cemetery that bore his name, the Cooper Cemetery. By the time of the 1893 Atlas, Jonathan Moore had died, and Frank Cooper owned the land just west of the Cooper Cemetery.
In 1906, Eliza Cooper, wife of Frank Cooper, died at the age of 68 and was buried in Cooper Cemetery. Frank Cooper married Mrs. Jennie Travis one year later, on October 30, 1907. Frank Cooper then moved to Fairbury. The 1909 Livingston County history book reported that in his later years, Frank Cooper took an interest in the temperance movement that led him to act with the Prohibition Party. Frank Cooper took a radical stand on the question of temperance by protesting that no man should be licensed to sell that which injures his fellow man.
In 1914, Frank Cooper was 81 years of age. One day, he ate lunch at home and then walked up to Main Street to get a shave. After getting a shave, Frank went to the Mapel Bros. Harness store, where Once N Again is now located. He sat in a chair in the harness shop and visited with Mr. Sype until he suddenly experienced a massive heart attack. Frank Cooper died in the harness shop chair. He was buried in Cooper Cemetery.
John “Granville” Masterson (1900-1967) was born in Belle Prairie Township and lived in Fairbury in his later years. Granville Masterson was one of the trustees of the Cooper Cemetery. In Blade articles in 1946 and 1951, Granville referred to the Frank Cooper Cemetery instead of Cooper Cemetery. Granville Masterson likely knew Frank Cooper, and he knew that in his early years, he lived next door to the cemetery. Granville mistakenly thought the cemetery was named after Frank Cooper when it was really named after his father, James Cooper (1832-1870).
In the 1970s, Mary Peterson Erickson and several friends of yours went to every cemetery in Livingston County and recorded the information on the gravestones. She published her results in two volumes titled Livingston County Cemetery Records. In 1979, they visited Cooper Cemetery and recorded 315 people buried in marked graves in the cemetery. Copies of her books are available at the Dominy Memorial Library.
The FindaGrave.com website reports that 355 people are currently buried in Cooper Cemetery. This relatively old cemetery traces back to pioneer settler James Cooper, who arrived south of Fairbury in 1834. The cemetery has many old gravestones dating back to the 1840s.
(Dale Maley's local history feature is sponsored each week by Dr. Charlene Aaron)
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