James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore, author, born in Burlington, New Jersey, 15 September 1789; died in Cooperstown, New York, 14 September 1851. On his father's side he was descended from James Cooper, of Stratford-on-Avon, England, who immigrated to America in 1679 and made extensive purchases of land from the original proprietaries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He and his immediate descendants were Quakers, and for a long time many of them remained on the lands thus acquired. His mother, Elizabeth Fenimore, was of Swedish descent, and this name too is of frequent occurrence among the Society of Friends in the old Quaker settlements. Cooper was the eleventh of twelve children, most of whom died early. Soon after the conclusion of the revolutionary war William Cooper became the owner of a tract of land, several thousand acres in extent, within the borders of New York state and lying along the head-waters of the Susquehanna river. He encouraged the settlement of this tract as early as 1786, and by 1788 had selected and laid out the site of Cooperstown, on the shore of Otsego lake. A dwelling-house was erected, and in the autumn of 1790 the formidable task was undertaken of transporting a company of fifteen persons, including servants, from the comparative civilization of New Jersey to the wilderness of central New York. The journey was accomplished on 10 November and for six years the family lived in the log-house originally constructed for their domicile.

In 1796 Mr. Cooper determined to make his home permanently in the town he had founded, which by that time promised to become a thriving settlement. He began the construction of a mansion, completed in 1799, which he named Otsego Hall, and which was for many years the manor-house of his own possessions, and by far the most spacious and stately private residence in central New York. To every reader that has fallen under the spell of Cooper's Indian romances, the surroundings of his boyhood days are significant. The American frontier prior to the 19th century was very different from that which exists at present. Then the foremost pioneers of emigration had barely begun to push their way westward through the Mohawk valley, the first available highway to the west. Out of the forest that bordered the shores of Otsego lake and surrounded the little settlement, Indians came for barter, or possibly with hostile intent, and until young Cooper was well advanced toward manhood the possibility of an Indian raid was by no means remote. The Six Nations were still strong enough to array a powerful band of warriors, and from their chieftains Cooper, no doubt, drew the portraits of the men that live in his pages. Such surroundings could not but stimulate a naturally active imagination, and the mysterious influence of the wilderness, augmented subsequently by the not dissimilar influence of the sea, pervaded his entire life.

The wilderness was his earliest and most potent teacher, after that the village school, and then private instruction in the family of the Rev. J. Ellison, the English rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Albany. This gentleman was a graduate of an English University, an accomplished scholar, and an irreconcilable monarchist. It is to be feared that the free air of the western continent did not altogether counteract the influence of his tutor during the formative period of the young American's mind. As an instructor, however, Ellison was, undeniably, well equipped, and such teachers were, in those days, extremely rare. His death, in 1802, interrupted Cooper's preparatory, studies, but he was already fitted to join the freshman class at Yale in the beginning of its second term, January 1803. According to his own account, he learned but little at College. Indeed, the thoroughness of his preparation in the classics under Ellison made it so easy for him to maintain a fair standing in his class that he was at liberty to pass his time as pleased him best. His love for out-of-door life led him to explore the rugged hills northward of New Haven, and the equally picturesque shores of Long Island sound probably gave him his first intimate acquaintance with the ocean. No doubt all this was, to some extent, favorable to the development of his sympathy with nature" but it did not improve his standing with the College authorities. Gradually he became wilder in his defiance of the academic restraints, and was at last expelled, during his third year. Perhaps, if the faculty could have foreseen the brilliant career of their unruly pupil, they would have exercised a little more forbearance in his case. Be this as it may, the father accepted the son's version of the affair and, after a heated controversy with the College authorities, took him home.

The United States already afforded a refuge for the political exiles of Europe, and was beginning also to attract the attention of distinguished foreign visitors; and many of these found their way as guests to Otsego hall. Talleyrand was among them, and almost every nationality of Europe was represented either among the permanent settlers of the town or among transient sojourners. Young Cooper, however, did not linger long at home, and, as the merchant marine offered the surest stepping-stone to a commission in the navy (the school at Annapolis not being yet established), a berth was secured for him on board the ship" Sterling," of Wiscasset, Maine, John Johnston master. She sailed from New York with a cargo of flour bound for Cowes and a market, in the autumn of 1806, about the time when Cooper should have been taking his degree with the rest of his classmates at Yale. He shipped as a sailor before the mast, and, although his social position was well known to the captain, he was never admitted to the cabin. A stormy voyage of forty days made a sailor of him before the "Sterling" reached London. During her stay there, Cooper made good use of his time, and visited everything that was accessible to a young man in sailor's dress, in and about the city. The "Sterling" sailed for the straits of Gibraltar in January 1807, and, taking on board a return cargo, went back to London, where she remained several weeks. In July she cleared for home, and reached Philadelphia after a voyage of fifty-two days.