JOB COOPER c.1732 1804 The word wanderlust must have been coined to describe Job Cooper, the father of Nathan Cooper. Trying to track down Job brings to mind an old family expression "slipperier than a naked Indian." He was born in 1731 or 1732; we don't know where as yet, but probably in Pennsylvania. We do know that he was the son of Thomas Cooper, who died in Frederick County, Virginia in 1785, and his wife, Mary. (Will Book 5 Page 90) Thomas recognized the tendency of his fifty three year old son to wander by hemming him in with his will:...i will and bequeath to my beloved son Job Cooper during his natural life the upper of my land where he now lives on, beginning at a large Popular and running thence across to Shanandoah River within view of the Spring near the point of the Island and also I give and Bequeath my said Son one Heifer and three pounds due me from Hegroe Toney and ten bushels of wheat my said son Job shall not sell or Rent the land above Willed to him that in case he leaves the said Land to give it up to his mother or Brother George Cooper...30 April 1785 Our first evidence of the Cooper family having been in what was then a much larger Virginia (West Virginia broke off during the Civil War), was in Hampshire County. The record is from a young man of Job's own age, George Washington himself. Then a twenty one year old surveyor, he was passing through, enroute to where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River at the site of present day Pittsburgh. Washington noted in his diary of October, 1753: 1
...a party of seven French Indians...on October 26 attacked the home of Thomas Cooper on the South Branch of the Potomac River and carried off his eleven year old son... (Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier 1753 1758, by William A. Hunter, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, 1960, p.86.) (A footnote gives credit to journal of George Washington, 9, 18. For reports of the Indian attack, see Pennsylvania Gazette, December 27, 1753; February 26, 1754.) An answer to a letter Washington had sent out about the capture of the Cooper boy can be found in The Diaries of George Washington, Vol. I, 1748 65, edited by Donald Jackson, University of Virginia Press, p.139: The Indians enquir'd very particularly about their brothers in Carolina Goal. They also asked what sort of a Boy it was that was taken from the South Branch; for they had, by some Indians, heard that a Party of French Indians had carried a White Boy by the Cuscusa Town toward the [Great] Lakes. (Cuscusa was a reference to Kuskuskies, a Delaware village in the vicinity of present day New Castle, PA) Hostilities with the French and their Indian allies over the Ohio River Valley erupted into the French and Indian War, and life on the frontier was no longer safe. During this war the frontier settlers sought safer havens, and this pushed the frontier eastward to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was to the west slope of the Blue Ridge that Thomas retreated with his family, settling on land that stretched from the Shenandoah River, in present day Clark County (then Frederick County), over the top of the mountain into present day Loudon County. It is unknown if Thomas Cooper moved his family eastward at this time or later, when the war broke out in earnest. A Col. James Smith, of Bedford, Pennsylvania, was captured by the "French Indians" just outside Bedford in 1755 shortly before Braddock's defeat on the Monongahela River. He was imprisoned in Fort Pitt (aka Fort Duquesne by the French; aka Pittsburgh). He was there when the many prisoners from the battle were put to death. Later, adopted into the Delaware tribe, he witnessed and later wrote about the occurrences in the Delaware town before and after a raid of the South Branch of the Potomac River, where the Coopers lived. He told of the preparations of the Indian chief "Pluggy" and his followers to make the raid. He also describes their return from the raid: 2
When we returned to the [Indian] town, Pluggy and his party had arrived and brought with them a considerable number of scalps and prisoners from the south branch of the Potomac. They also brought with them an English Bible, which they gave to a Dutch woman who was one of the captives, but, as she could not read English, she made a present of it to me, which was very acceptable. (p. 53, Historic Events in the Muskingum and Tuscararas Valleys with Adventures of Putnam and Heckewelder, Founders of Ohio, ed. by C.H.Mitchener, Dayton, OH, Thomas W. Odell, pub., 1876) Apparently Job did not retreat with his family. In Hampshire County on September 2, 1755, Job enlisted in Captain John Ashby's Second Company of Rangers. His mustering papers describe him as being a twenty three year old, 5'10" tall, dark skinned Virginia farmer. (Nearly all the recruits were described as dark skinned because, as farmers, they were deeply tanned.) The company was being formed to defend the Hampshire Frederick County area from attack. The first job of the newly formed company was to build a fort. "Fort Ashby," named for the commander, was built that fall. (The present day town of Fort Ashby, West Virginia still carries the name.) The company suffered a defeat by the the French when battle came, but the fort was not captured. Ashby made a dramatic escape when he was captured. It is unknown how Job fared. His brothers, Joseph and Thomas, Jr., served in the war from Frederick County. Presumably, Job returned to farming after the war, but his wanderlust ways cast some doubt as to how long he could remain anywhere. He probably married about 1752 to a woman whose name is as of yet unknown. She would have been Nathan Cooper's mother. The woman apparently died young (Indian attack?) because on May 10, 1763, at Gloria Dei Church (aka Old Swede's Church) in Philadelphia, he married again, to Rebecca "Becky" Youse. It is another war when we locate Job again. On June 11, 1777, he enlisted as a private on the Virginia Line in George Washington's Continental Army. He served in the company of Captain William Vause, 12th Virginia Regiment, commanded by Col. James Wood. (National Archives Military Records) Not quite two months later, he deserted. In 1780 he again enlisted, but this time in Chester County, Pennsylvania; these records still need to be sent for from the National Archives. It is believed that Chester County may have been where the Coopers had lived before moving to Virginia because Job seems to have been back and forth from Virginia to that area of Pennsylvania. Job apparently remained in Pennsylvania a few years. Becky's family lived there as did several Coopers whose name had originally been Kieffer. He does not appear on the 1782 Virginia State Enumeration, but does appear on the 1784 list in Hampshire County, VA (WV). We know from his father's 1785 will that Job had returned to his father's Frederick County farm. It is believed that this farm was located in the part of Frederick County that became Clarke County in 1836. 3
In 1787 Job appears on the tax list of Loudon County, Virginia, as owning five horses and one head of cattle, probably the heifer left to him in his father's will. Also in the Loudon tax list is Job's mother, Mary Cooper, owning 5 horses and 5 head of cattle. It is possible that the Cooper land lay on the county line because the top of the ridge where Job lived, overlooking the Shenandoah River, was the county line. Job did leave his father's farm some years before the death of his mother. He does not show up on later records of Frederick or Loudon counties. The 1790 U.S. Census of Virginia was destroyed, so we don't have that as a reference. His mother disappeared from tax lists after 1791, presumably having died. We find our first trace of Job elsewhere than his father's farm in 1786 shortly after his inheriting the land. He apparently owned land which today lies in Davidson County, North Carolina, a part of Rowan County until 1822. The land lay on Rich Fork of Abbott Creek, a tributary of the Yadkin River. We also find a Job Cooper back in Hampshire County, VA, witnessing a lease. On September 12, 1786, Job Cooper; a David Cooper; Job's brother Joseph Cooper; and Arjalon Price, a neighbor of Thomas Cooper, Jr., who may have been related to the Coopers, witnessed the lease of 146 acres on Patterson Creek by Thomas and his son Joel to another party. Thomas had just inherited his father's land on Allegheny Mountain and was making that his home. Job appears on the First U.S. Census (1790) in Rowan County, NC in a cluster with a Charles Cooper and a Jonathen Cooper. Job's household then consisted of one free white male over sixteen years old (Job) and three white females. There seems to have been only a husband and a wife in the Charles Cooper household, perhaps newlyweds. The Jonathen Cooper household had Jonathan plus two males under 16 and four females. But Job wasn't stationary during these years. In 1787 we also find him owning chattel but no land in Washington County, in the short lived "State of Franklin." This area is today the extreme northeast corner of Tennessee. The portion of Washington County where Job's relatives lived there became Carter County, Tennessee, in 1796. This land lay in the Watauga River Valley. On January 20, 1788, Job was bondsman when his nephew, Joel Cooper, Jr., married Elizabeth Job. (Job also seems to have left descendants or kinsmen in Davidson (Rowan) County, NC, because their records can be found there.) It seems that Job's brothers liked him and most named a son after him. Job apparently left both Rowan County, NC, and Washington/Carter County, TN. He suddenly appeared in 1792 on the tax list of Nelson County, KY, from which Hardin County was made in 1793. There lived a Benjamin and a Nathaniel Cooper and the family of his sister Hannah Crist (aka Criss) (married to Jacob Crist, Sr.) (Youngers, who may have been relatives, also lived nearby in Bullitt County.) In 1794 and 1795 Job was on the tax lists of Logan County, KY. He apparently lived there with a son, Robert, who continued to live there after Job left (tax lists) and 4
who was killed by Indians. Robert had also appeared on the 1793 tax list of Washington (Carter) County, TN with brother Nathan. It is believed that the Mrs. Jemima Cooper, who married Moses Carsey (or Casey) in Hardin County in 1804 was Robert's widow and the mother of the Robert Cooper who there, in 1818, married Treasy Cooper. Then Job returned to the Watauga River Valley of Tennessee, where his son Nathan and other relatives yet lived, and appeared on the 1796 and 1798 tax lists there. In late 1798 or early 1799, he left to settle in Hardin County, KY. Even then, land documents suggest that Job was back and forth between the two areas. Job died in 1804 in Hardin County, Kentucky. Becky was shown in the 1810 U.S. Census there. Her household consisted of one male aged 10 15, 2 females under 10 years of age, one female aged 26 44, and one female (Becky) over 45. She appears to have been living with a widowed daughter or daughter in law. Next door was the household of Isaiah Matheny. In 1809 William Cooper married Mary Matheny there. By the 1820 U.S. Census the Coopers were all gone. If Becky lived beyond 1820, she was no longer considered the head of the household. It is possible that the widow with whom she had lived in 1810 had remarried and Becky continued to live with that family elsewhere. A Job Cooper who was born in 1765 and married Elizabeth Charley in North Carolina and who later lived in Bedford County, Tennessee, was probably the son of Job and Becky. Two of his sons were named Joel and Job. The Abraham Cooper who had earlier lived in Carter County, Tennessee, also moved to Bedford County, where this Job lived. Abraham may have been another son of Job's, but one descendant of his claims otherwise. Charles Cooper, who had lived near Job in 1790 in Rowan County, NC, also appears later in Bedford County, TN records. More will abstracts & inventories from Hardin Co., KY taken from _Abstract of Early Kentucky Wills & Inventories_ by J. Estelle Stewart King, origin ally published 1933. from Book A 1792 1809 COOPER, JOB. Inventory. Nov. 19, 1804. Apprs: Isaac FINLEY, Edward REED, Thomas LOGSDON 5