Thursday, August 25, 2011

Photo of James Ingersoll Cooper, lawyer at Amherst, Massachusetts



Photograph of a man identified on reverse as James Ingersoll Cooper.  The photo was taken by the Notman Photo Company of Boston, Massachusetts.






James Ingersoll Cooper was born 7 April 1849 at Calais, Maine, the son of James Sullivan Cooper and second wife Abigail Ingersoll (Girdler) Cooper.


His paternal grandparents were John and Elizabeth (Savage) Cooper.  His maternal grandparents were John and Abigail (Ingersoll) Girdler.


Paternal grandfather John Cooper moved to Washington County, Maine, and became a noted citizen, as noted below in a snippet from the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 67:






In 1866, James' father James Sullivan Cooper moved the family to Amherst, Massachusetts, with the intention of having his sons James and Charles Wendell Cooper graduate from Amherst College.  They graduated in 1873, but their father had not lived to see the day.


James Ingersoll Cooper sought additional training in the field of law and eventually became a lawyer in practice with poet Emily Dickinson's brother William, at Amherst, Massachusetts.  


Brother Charles Wendell Cooper went off to Harvard Medical School and graduated from there in 1877.  He returned to Amherst to practice and became the Dickinson family physician. 


He married a distant cousin, Elizabeth Savage Porter, the daughter of John Cooper Porter, who was born in Machias, Maine, in 1825, not far from Calais, Maine, but who had moved to St. Louis, Missouri to seek his fortune.  Daughter Elizabeth was born there in 1853.  


It would be interesting to know how she and her future husband Charles Wendell Cooper met - perhaps at a family reunion in Maine?


From the Biographical Record of the Alumni of Amherst College...1821-[1896], Volume 2, 1901:








I don't believe that James Ingersoll Cooper ever married.  He died at New London, Connecticut on 14 August 1922, at the age of 73.


If you have any corrections, additions or insights regarding any of the information presented here, please leave a comment or contact me directly.


More information on James Ingersoll Cooper is available at the Maine and Maritime Canada Genealogy network.


A map of Calais, Maine:



View Larger Map





A map of Amherst, Massachusetts:



View Larger Map



Thanks for stopping by!


No comments:

Post a Comment