William Cooper's Town

Alan Taylor. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. Vintage Books, 1995.

Before it became the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, before it became known as the place where Abner Doubleday almost certainly did not invent baseball itself, Cooperstown, NY was known as the place James Fenimore Cooper immortalized in some of his novels; most notably in his early work The Pioneers. Best known now for introducing the seminal American character of Natty Bumppo, the novel was originally something of a wish-fulfillment reclamation of a lost patrimony by the son of the town's founder and namesake--William Cooper.

William Cooper was a man who worked his way up from a humble beginning as a wheelwright in late colonial society towards being a landlord of means in the new Republic. He did so through measures which were often bold, occasionally reckless, and all too often at odds with the wishes and best interests of his patrons--members of the old elite whom Cooper wanted to impress and eventually count himself among. Cooper proved quite adept--and very lucky--at taking advantage of the disruptions to established social and economic norms in the wake of the upheaval of the Revolution. Soon, he found himself in possession of thousands of acres of upstate New York land, and the status as landlord and patron to a new community.

Cooper never attained the gentility to go with his wealth that he desired, but neither did he embrace the politics of Republicanism that his humble origins and his own life story might have naturally inclined him towards. Rather, Cooper became a staunch Federalist and never wavered from this affiliation, even in the wake of the decline of Federalism in the years after Jefferson's election as President, as Republicans took power at all levels of state government in New York.

His downfall would come not only from the decline of Federalism but from ongoing economic and demographic changes which both challenged his control of his original holdings in the Cooperstown area, and overwhelmed his ability to maintain payments on his ever-growing debts. Cooper, dazzled by his own early success, sought to replicate it elsewhere in New York, to no avail. He over-extended himself, and tangled his estate even further into a web of debts, dubious property claims, and conflicting obligations.

He never resolved those issues, but rather passed them on in a will that was more generous and lucrative towards his heirs on paper than it was in reality. The Cooper children soon discovered that their inheritance was mortgaged to the hilt, and over the next decade and a half (roughly) creditors took it all away. Neither Cooper nor most of his offspring lived to see the final decimation of his once-impressive holdings, but his youngest son James did.

James Cooper (he added the "Fenimore" in his 30's not long before embarking on his wildly successful writing career--the only profession he ever succeeded at) sought to recast the history of his father and his hometown in ways which both restored the family fortune but also restored the ideal of social harmony and deference to betters which both he and his father believed in, despite the relentless tide of democratic leveling the country was going through. Read that way, The Pioneers is an idealized history of the early American republic which pointed the way towards a peaceful, stable, harmonious future which only existed in the dreams of Federalists like William Cooper and in the bestselling books written by his son.