Josiah Cooper was born 31 August 1828 in New Paltz, New York, child of Josiah and Hannah (Ellis) Cooper. Little is known about his family; he is believed to be the youngest of their five (?) children. His early years were spent on a farm in New York. At age 18 (1846) he went to New York City to serve as an apprentice cabinetmaker. In August 1848 at the old Frederick homestead near Harrimans (Turners), Orange Co., New York, he married Harriet Frederick. He was then 20 years old; she was 17. (Harriet Frederick, b. 9 May 1831, Harrimans NY, youngest child of Jacob and Catherine [Stevens] Frederick.)

Their first child, Jane Ann, was born 25 July 1849 on the Frederick homestead. Harriet's "Friendship Quilt," with many names in India ink and dated 1849 (which I have) must have been in progress about this time. In 1851 the family moved to Pennsylvania. We can only speculate what led to the restlessness that eventually brought them to Minnesota. A brother of Harriet, Francis Frederick, lived in Pennsylvania at the time. Perhaps the grass looked greener there; or perhaps there were jobs there for a cabinetmaker. On 16 December 1851, Catherine Emma (Kate) was born (Wyoming Co., PA, near Tunkhanock). Later the family moved back to Orange Co. and eventually to Newburgh, NY where they lived in the same residence as some persons involved in the building trade. James M. was born 16 September 1855, probably in Newburgh. It appears that they waited for his birth before they set out on the long journey westward. How we wish we could know what sent them away from beautiful upstate New York, established homes and family to an unknown future. Again we must speculate because no one left us anything concrete. Facts are that treaties with the Indians had recently opened up southern Minnesota for settlement. (Family lore calls it "the wilds of Minnesota.") Old Jacob Frederick, Harriet's father, had some Bounty Land coming to him from his service in the War of 1812. There must have been advertising aplenty to lure settlers. Whatever the reason, the Josiah Cooper family was again on the move.

Here notes differ somewhat as to who went first and the sequence of those who followed, but there was an exodus of Fredericks to Minnesota in the mid 1850's. Josiah and Harriet (Frederick) Cooper and Harriet's brothers, Francis W. Frederick, Albert Frederick, Jacob S. Frederick and sister, Polly Ann (Frederick) Ferrell and their families, as well as her parents, Jacob and Catherine (Stevens) Frederick, all made their way to Minnesota at that time.

In late October of 1855, Josiah and Harriet Cooper travelled by "train and ferry to the end of the line" at Shakopee, Minnesota, to the home of Harriet's brother, Francis W. Frederick, about 3 miles from Shakopee. The quotes are directly from family lore. A note made by an eastern relative (who stayed behind) said they left by oxcart for the West. That same person also said they went to Wisconsin (although at one time Minnesota was part of Wisconsin Territory). Our family lore is probably the most accurate.

In studying the ways and means available to them in 1855 it seems likely they travelled by train to Albany, NY or perhaps up the Hudson River by river boat that far, thence through the Erie Canal to the Great Lakes, through the lakes to Milwaukee or Chicago, overland from Milwaukee to Minnesota or if from Chicago by canal or overland to the Mississippi and north to the Minnesota River to Shakopee.

It doesn't seem late October in Minnesota would be a very good time for new settlers to arrive. Perhaps they didn't know about the rigors of a Minnesota winter, or as speculated earlier, they waited for the arrival of their baby. At any rate they were fortunate to have a place waiting for them with Harriet's brother. They soon set up their own home nearby. James M. died there on 7 November 1856. Charles Henry was born there on 24 September 1857. On 5 May 1860, Jacob Fred was born.

There is no record of the Coopers owning land in Scott Co. until October 1860 when records show Josiah received Patents for Bounty Lands that were reassigned to him, 160 A. in Sections 11 and 12 of then Eagle Creek township. This land is just south of the Minnesota River and a short distance southeast of now Valley Fair. Old Jacob Frederick and Nathaniel Ferrell owned land which is now part of Valley Fair.

In later years J. Fred indicated that the farm at Shakopee was a very poor one. Kate had said, also, that her father (Josiah) could not find work as a cabinet maker in Shakopee so he made ax handles and did any kind of work he could find (in addition to farming).

On 15 August 1862 at Shakopee Josiah volunteered for three years of military service in the Civil War. By this time he was 34 years old, Harriet 31. Family lore and military records indicate that the government allowed the volunteers to gather their crops before they were mustered into military service. When news of the Indian uprising came, crops were abandoned and the volunteers joined the soldiers from Fort Snelling and proceeded to Fort Ridgley. Josiah's company (Co. I, Ninth Infantry, Minnesota Volunteers) remained at Fort Ridgley until the summer of 1863 when they proceeded to St. Paul and acted as provost guards until ordered South in October 1863.

Josiah was appointed Corporal on 30 September 1862 and served as a carpenter in the Quartermaster Dept. He was promoted to Sgt. on 1 December 1863, after which he is noted to have drilled troops.

The company was stationed at Rolla, Missouri, acting as guards for about seven months. Then in May of 1864 they left Rolla for St. Louis and ultimately the Battle of Guntown (Mississippi, 10 June 1864) in which they were defeated. While double-quicking to the front in that battle, Josiah suffered sunstroke and fell out. Had he not been found by some buddies and dragged along on the retreat he might well have been taken prisoner and ended up in Andersonville (as most did who were captured in that battle). As it was, he spent some time in the hospital at Memphis, Tennessee.

While Josiah was away, Harriet and the children lived with her parents, Catherine and Jacob Frederick. Eliza Stella was born 17 December 1862 while Josiah was at Fort Ridgley.

Josiah mustered out of the infantry 24 August 1865 at Fort Snelling. He was then nearly 37 years old.

A "war story" which Leta Gilman of Sauk Center remembered from her childhood bears re-telling. Leta said Josiah Cooper, her grandfather, was often her baby sitter when she was a child and he told her this story: While fighting Indians he fell off his horse and was stunned. A fellow soldier, one William Dean, picked him up, threw him over his horse and brought him back to the fort, saving his life. Now the interesting part of this story is that Josiah Cooper's application for a disability pension based on his Civil War service required several affadivits to prove his disability. The story given there tells that Josiah was a small man and therefore not in the first wave of soldiers double-quicking to the front. He "fell out" due to the intense heat of June in Mississippi and was found sitting beside the road with his head in his hands by two buddies (William Dean and Fred Merrill) as they retreated. He said, "Leave me alone," but they did not. One carried his gun and the other dragged him along. One can speculate if these are two stories or the same story garbled by childhood memories and years of re-telling.

After Josiah's return from the War, probably the Spring of 1866, Josiah and Jacob S. Frederick, Harriet's brother, went to Ashley township in the County of Stearns to pick out homesteads. They returned to Shakopee and brought their families back to Ashley in covered wagons drawn by oxen and wagons drawn by horses. Double shacks were erected by Ashley Creek (Section 18?) as temporary shelters; upright log cabins were built shortly thereafter. Early Land Records show that Josiah Cooper purchased land in Sec. 7 with Kentucky Agricultural Scrip in October of 1866. Although Homestead Rules and Regulations and actual practice are hard to figure out, it appears from the same early records that he may have Homesteaded in adjoining Section 18 at about the same time. When I was a child I was shown two depressions in pasture land near Ashley Creek that were supposed to have been the homestead sites. An 1880 plat book shows a structure in Sec. 18 at about this place. The family was there when the Big Flood of 1867 took place, when it rained 30 inches in 30 hours, washed out the Mill in Sauk Centre and took lives. Nothing in family lore talks about that event. One wonders how they fared so close to the creek and few hills nearby. Harriet's brother, Jacob S. Frederick, claimed adjacent land to the east.

Francis W. and Hannah Frederick with their four children came from Scott Co. to stay with Josiah and Harriet for a while in the Fall of 1866, then took their own homestead near Reno (Leven Township, Pope Co.). It is believed that Harriet's aged parents, Catherine and Jacob Frederick, travelled with the Francis Frederick family to Ashley as they "came later and set up their own temporary shack nearby." Jacob and Catherine eventually homesteaded in Pope Co., just west of the Homesteads of Josiah and Jacob S. Frederick.

Josiah worked at his trade (cabinetmaker/carpenter) in Sauk Centre, apparently commuting to and from the homestead. Rosa (Rose) Zaddie, their last child, was born on the homestead 4 March 1872. Josiah was then nearly 44 years old, Harriet nearly 41. Interestingly enough, although the family Bible gives the date as 1872, Hattie and Leta Gilman made note that "Mother and Aunt Jane {Kate and Jane Ann Cooper} say the Bible is wrong, Rose was born in 1871." Apparently Rose herself did not agree with her sisters as she kept the 1872 date!

The family moved "into town" (Sauk Centre) in 1873, the reason given "so that the children could receive the benefits of an education." (Jane Ann was married, Kate would have been 22, Charles, 16, J. Fred, 13, Stella, 11, and Rose an infant.) Sauk Centre was still a frontier village in 1873. The Sauk Centre Herald reported in their 21 June 1873 issue that "the tide of immigation is flowing northwest and westward in a continual stream," with trains of travellers moving through town. Although they lived in town they must have continued to farm the Ashley land. Eliza Stella died in Sauk Centre 9 May 1874 of bronchitis. J. Fred and Stella can be found in lists by the school principal reporting on attendance and deportment in the 14 June 1873 Sauk Centre Herald.

In later years, son Charles purchased some of the land in Ashley township and built a beautiful frame house, barn and outbuildings (ca 1890). (I remember that house from my childhood days. It must have had seven or eight bedrooms on the second floor. A wonderful chrome parlor stove encased with mica glass stood in one of two parlors. Memories of that house would fill a page!) Charles continued to farm the land until he moved into Sauk Centre in 1929, when his wife's health began to fail. His son, Fred R. Cooper continued to live in the family home and farm the land until the 1950's when it was sold out of the family. The old farm home is only a memory as the buildings were razed sometime in the 1970's. The last of the trees of the old grove planted in the late 1800's were grubbed out and all traces of building stones removed in 1990-91. I expect the depressions of the old cabins that once remained near Ashley Creek are filled in; now that house, barn and grove remnants are gone, nothing remains of the Coopers in Ashley.

In Josiah's papers applying for a pension (National Archives) he is referred to as a "small man" and at age 58 is described as 5'6" tall with fair complexion, light hair and hazel eyes.

In later years, Harriet and Josiah's youngest child and her husband, Rose and Frank Parker, lived with them in their house at 402 Elm St. in Sauk Centre.

Josiah died 3 November 1905, age 77, of cancer, which had begun on his lip. (He always smoked a pipe.) Bernice (Cooper) Welch remembered that her grandfather Josiah had a rose-like growth on his cheek. Harriet died 3 July 1929, age 98, of old age. Affidavits applying for a widow's pension after Josiah died indicate that she was quite well-off. Such a pension may have been based on need and her several assets were spelled out suggesting that she did not "need" the pension. The house she owned was described as "one of the finest in Sauk Centre." Her daughter Rose and husband Frank Parker lived with her; I believe they bought the house from her estate as they continued to live there. Harriet was the oldest resident of Sauk Centre and probably of all of Stearns Co. Newspaper accounts indicate that she was of sound mind until the very end. Both Josiah and Harriet are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Sauk Centre, Minnesota.

Jane Ann, Josiah and Harriet's oldest child, married Alan Vessey, whose family also lived in Ashley township. The young couple farmed initially, then moved into Sauk Centre. They had five children, two of whom died in infancy. One son died in WWI in France. Late in life, Jane Ann divorced Alan. There must have been problems earlier as Josiah's Will reflects a lack of trust in Alan.

Catherine (Kate) married Lorenzo Gilman, son of early settlers. An early picture of Kate bears the title "Ashley Dolly." They lived in a grand frame house on Maple Street in Sauk Centre, a house which Josiah may have built for Kate. Ren and Kate had two daughters, Harriet (Hattie) and Leta. Both trained as teachers and taught school for awhile. Later Hattie was a bookkeeper for several large businesses in Sauk Centre. Leta married and divorced. Neither sister had offspring, so that line has died out.

J. Fred Cooper married Mamie Shaw. He became a well-known businessman in Sauk Centre. They had four children. The oldest, Glen, suffered from asthma and died when a young man.

Rosa (Rose) after graduating from Sauk Centre Highschool attended the University of Minnesota and became a teacher in Ashley township and Sauk Centre. She married Frank S. Parker. They had no children.

Reconstructed from: Scott and Stearns Co. Land Records Sauk Centre Herald Obituary articles Family records and pictures Letter from the Veteran's Adm. to Leta Gilman Notes kept by Harriet and Leta Gilman Census records National Archives Pension/Military Records Minnesota in the Civil War and Indian War, 1861-1865 Pub. by the Board of Commissioners, 1891 (beginning p. 416): 973.7 82-556

(Note: an earlier version of this story was submitted to the St. Cloud Area Genealogists for their records. It was published in their newsletter.)

March 2000