My Genealogy Hound

OLIVER C. COOPER, editor and proprietor of the Ovid Independent, is one of the strong men of the town and village. The Independent has had a history that shows what pluck and courage can accomplish. It succeeded the Ovid Bee, and was first published by Hyatt & Cooper, March 5, 1873. The office thus established was destroyed by fire October 11, 1874, at which time nearly all the business houses of Ovid were swept away. Mr. Cooper then re-established the paper, and conducted it alone. It is a folio of eight columns, and, as its name indicates, is independent. For nearly twenty years it was the only paper published in Ovid, and in that time it has won a hold upon the people which no competition can shake.

Mr. Cooper, our subject, was born in Clockville, December 15, 1837, the son of Conrad and Sarah Elizabeth (Knight) Cooper, natives of New Jersey, and Providence, R. I., respectively. In 1825 they were married at Troy, where they both resided. Conrad Cooper was a miller, and very soon after his marriage removed to Clockville, where he became the owner of a mill, in the operation of which he was engaged until shortly before his death, which occurred in the town of Lenox, Madison County, N. Y., May 26, 1846, at the early age of forty-four. His wife survived him for almost thirty years, dying October 19, 1872, in her sixty-ninth year. They were members of the Presbyterian Church, and their faithful and devoted lives proved an inspiration to those who knew them best. The father was an Elder in the church, and exerted much influence for good. Nine children came to grace the family circle, three sons and six daughters. James S. died in Ovid; Lucy Ann married William Ackroyd, and is now a resident of Jefferson County; Elizabeth married Charles Boucher, and died in Cynthiana; Thomas H. is a railroad man, and makes his home In Watertown; Harriet N. married William K. Wyckoff, and died June 18, 1867, at Ripon, Wis.; Adelia became the wife of Dr. C. T. Mitchell, and makes her home in Canandaigua; Clora is Mrs. J. L. Cone, of Waterloo, while Mary Etta is Mrs. John Stevenson, Jr., of Albany.

Mr. Cooper, the subject of this article, passed his early life in various places with his widowed mother, or with his brothers, until 1850, when he went to Troy to live with an uncle. Two years later he entered the office of the Northern New York Family Journal, published at Troy, to learn the printing business. From this office he passed to that of the Waterloo Observer, where he was employed two years, and later worked in Buffalo, Rochester and other cities, going to Boston in 1856 as a journeyman printer. In the fall of 1857, driven by a love of adventure and a desire to see the world, he went to sea, shipping as a sailor before the mast in a vessel bound for the island of Sumatra, in the East Indies. After an absence of eighteen months, he resumed his work as a printer in Boston, where he was engaged until the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1861. He was among the first to enlist in the Union army, and was mustered into the service April 19, 1861, in Company H, First Massachusetts Infantry. After serving two years, he was discharged on account of disabling wounds received in a bayonet charge at Yorktown. He participated in the battles of the Army of the Potomac from Bull Run until his honorable dismissal on the eve of the terrible struggle at Chancellorville.

Again Mr. Cooper resumed his trade at Boston. In the winter of 1864 he came to Seneca County, and found work in the office of the Ovid Bee, and later was made the foreman of the Reveille at Seneca Falls. Following this, he was engaged in the Observer office at Waterloo as associate editor and foreman. In 1874 he was foreman of the LeRoy Gazelle, and finally he came to Ovid, where he has accomplished a difficult undertaking, and made a good business out of the ashes of a great conflagration.

Mr. Cooper was married, on the 10th of July, 1859, to Miss Annie E. Patterson, daughter of Eliphett S. Patterson, a blacksmith of Boston. They have adopted two children. Bertha and William, brother and sister, that their home might know the delights of childhood. Mr. Cooper is a Democrat, but his paper is independent. He is a member of the Grand Army, and is Past Commander of Charles T. Harris Post, G. A. R. He is a member of Masonic organizations, and Brethren of the Mystic Square know him for a thoroughly good fellow. By right and by desire his name is on the roll of membership of the Society of the Army of the Potomac. As he recalls his own military experiences, he remembers also that his grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary struggle, and what one fought to establish, the other fought to maintain.