William Lloyd Cooper and Elizabeth Beams

WILLIAM COOPER > AMOS COOPER > WILLIAM LLOYD COOPER m Elizabeth Beams

William  Lloyd Cooper & Elizabeth Beams
about 1865

Sometimes, I wonder just how some of the old relatives met one another. In the case of my 3rd great grandparents, William and Elizabeth, I finally found the solution. This story took a while to unfold.

Let's go back for a moment to the Quaker couple Amos Cooper and his wife Hannah Lloyd who were living in Pennsylvania and then decided to move west to Illinois in the mid-1820s. The arrived in Crawford County, the county where a very large settlement of Quakers had started settling. Many of the residents were from Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The family remained there and then moved to neighboring Clark County for some time, but several of the family moved on to Stephenson County over the course of time.

William Lloyd Cooper was born the middle child on 11 Apr 1807 in Delaware. The birthplace is listed in the 1850 and 1870 census, so is probably accurate, but he is the only child in the family born there; the rest being born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. According to The History of Stephenson County, Illinois, his parents had removed briefly to Delaware and returned to Pennsylvania a year or two later.

Elizabeth Beams was born to James Beams and Nancy Lay on 19 Nov 1810 in Whitley, Kentucky. The Beams had many children and lived primarily in Whitley, Kentucky, though both hailed from Virginia. They were early settlers along the Cumberland River. Four Beams sisters; two married, two unmarried, removed to Crawford county in Illinois. They all lived near one another in this heavily Quaker area. Many of the Beams extended family were Quaker, including sister Anna's family, the Michael Cox's. Most of the Beams family remained in Whitley County. I have an interesting story about her other unmarried sister, Jane, and what happened after her marriage, which I'll save for another time and add to the Mystery Muddles file. We can surmise that the Beams were Quaker, though I haven't located any Quaker documents on the Beams family specifically so far.

Elizabeth and William Lloyd married on 10 May 1831 in Crawford County. Ten months later, the first of eight children arrived, Ann, whose progeny cross the Smull family lines in several places. My 2nd great grandmother, Mary Jane Cooper, landed about right in the middle of the group of eight kids. The Coopers lived in Clark, then moved on to Will County about 9 miles from Joliet for a year. He came to Stephenson County the following year (1841) and started working an uncultivated farm he entered with the government. He farmed for a dozen years, then retired, selling the farm and moving to the village of Rock Grove.

Of their eight children, seven survived them both. Son George Washington Cooper, born about 1838, died in 1856 at Rock Grove in Stephenson County at age 18.

Older Elizabeth Beams Cooper

In April of 1883, the news reported that William Cooper had recovered enough from injuries to be out and about:

We are pleased to find William Cooper out again. Sometime ago he fell and broke a rib and fractured some more.
Freeport Daily Bulletin
Wednesday, April 18, 1883, Freeport, Illinois

Just a month later, he had a severe stroke, from which he never fully recovered:

Last week our friend William Cooper had an apopletic stroke. We understand he is convalescent.
Freeport Daily Bulletin
Wednesday, May 30, 1883, Freeport, Illinois
===
William Cooper is still confined to his room. His recovery is slow and painful.
Freeport Daily Bulletin
Wednesday, June 6, 1883, Freeport, Illinois

W.L. Cooper died 08 Oct 1886 in Rock Grove. His wife Elizabeth moved to Bremer County, Iowa and spent the rest of her days living with her daughter, my 2nd great grandmother, Mary Jane Cooper Smull. After Mary Jane's husband Johnathan's death in 1885, the family moved into the town of Plainfield from their farm. Mrs Cooper died in June of 1897 in Plainfield and was buried near her husband in Union Cemetery in Rock Grove, Stephenson County, Illinois.