- HIRAM COOPER, whose life has been spent in Wisconsin, was
born in Walworth county,
- February 1, 1847, and is one of a family of eight children
born to John H. and Dolly (HOUSTON) COOPER. His father, for
many years a leading citizen of Rock county, was born at Rockingham
in Windham county, Vermont, November 22, 1804, to John and Diana
(HIMES) COOPER. He received his education and passed his boyhood
in his native state, and for some years taught school there.
On November 18, 1828, at Ackworth, N.H., he married Miss Dolly,
daughter of Alexander HOUSTON, who died December 30, 1854. Mr.
COOPER then married Sarah BLOOD, who died at Shopiere, Wis.,
in April, 1865. After the death of his second wife he married
Loraine BARD, who also died at Shopiere in 1874, and he took
for his fourth wife Miss Mary BARTON.
- Mr. COOPER on coming West in the spring of 1845 settled and
lived for ten years at Heart
- Prairie, Wis., then lived three years at Clinton Corners,
and in the spring of 1858 moved to Shopiere and engaged in the
real estate business, continuing in that line till 1880, when
he returned to Clinton township. He was a man of much influence
and prominent in his community, filling numerous offices of trust
and being for two years a member of the board of supervisors
of Rock county when the board comprised only seven members.
In his early life he was a Whig, but supported General Andrew
Jackson for the presidency. In April, 1891, while on a visit
to Shopiere, he suffered a stroke of paralysis which resulted
in his death at the home of his son, Solon, now a resident of
Clinton township, and was interred at Shopiere.
- Hiram was eleven years old when his father moved to Shopiere,
and he received his preliminary
- education there, and then attended the academy at Allen's
Grove, and later studied a year in the preparatory department
of Beloit College. On attaining his majority he began life for
himself and for a number of years leased from his father and
cultivated a farm in Clinton township. In 1874 he went to Kansas
and there spent eight years in general farming, and in 1882 returned
home, and in the fall of that year settled on his present farm
of eighty acres in section 22 (purchased by his father) and resumed
his occupation of farming and stock raising. Mr. COOPER, a Republican
in politics, has for twelve years last past been clerk of his
town, and for twenty years or more has been a deacon in the local
Congregational church. He settled in Rock county before any
railroads were built there and has witnessed great changes and
may justly claim the honor of having done his share in the work
of transforming it into a land of rich farms and prosperous homes.
- In 1871 Mr. COOPER married Miss Carrie NEVINS, who was born
in Michigan but spent most
- of her life in Wisconsin. She was an active member of the
Congregational church and on her decease in 1882 left three children,
viz.: Elsie L., who lives at Clinton; Henry O., a gardener at
Montello, Wis.; and Oscar J., who married a Miss Olga, by whom
he has one child, Robert. He lives in Chicago and is employed
as an electrician for the Commonwealth Electric Company. After
the death of his first wife, Mr. COOPER married Miss Eliza, daughter
of Preston and Frances (SHOFIELD) SMITH, who was born in Clinton
township. Her father, a native of Rochester, N.Y., settled in
Wisconsin in 1846, before his marriage, and for many years was
engaged in general farming in Clinton township. Mr. SMITH while
a resident here was active and prominent in public affairs, taking
a leading part in politics. He was an ardent advocate of temperance
and a charter member and for many years an honored deacon of
the Congregational church at Clinton. Mr. SMITH now resides
at Hays, in the state of Kansas, where his wife died in 1879.
He is now eighty-five years of age. Mr. and Mrs. SMITH had
a family of eighty children, of whom seven are now (1907) living.
-
- Taken from "Rock County, Wis." by William Fiske
Brown, (c)1908, pp. 988-990.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
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