Alfred J Cooper, A Restless Guy

AMOS COOPER > JOHN L COOPER > ALFRED JAMES COOPER

Marshall, Oklahoma

Alfred was the second of John and Asenath (Maples) Cooper’s nine children. He strikes me as a guy who just had the worst kind of timing. In September of 1857, he married Marian "Angie" Angeline Willard in Will County, Illinois.

In 1859, he trekked without his wife west to California. Unfortunately, he returned without having found his fortune - he got to the party very late and came back half-starved. He packed up the family and moved to Fairbank, Buchanan County, Iowa in 1866. They stayed for several years there, but on they would go. Their next stop was in Rooks County, Kansas, located in western Kansas. Though the boundaries of the county had been drawn in 1867, the first settlers did not arrive until 1871. The great blizzard of 1873 and the locust siege of 1874 made things very difficult for settlers. Upon the arrival of the Coopers in 1879, they set about building their sod house full of leaks, bugs, and snakes. Even though they avoided the scourge of grasshoppers in 1874, lesser bug infestations filled the sky several times during their life there, leaving disaster in its wake. Lina reportedly left school and was “sent out”  to work in the homes of  people in town to help with housekeeping and childcare at a rate of $0.50 per day to help the family make ends meet.  The Cooper were struggling mightily due to all kinds of issues including drought and commodities prices. They relocated once again, this time to Beattie in Marshall County, northeast of Rooks by a few hours in 1883.

In 1891, while still in Beattie, Alfred’s daughter “Bird” was engaged to Peter Bender. Bender, on the

board of the Life School, had the job to announce the results of ballots. He noted one evening that there were more votes cast than people voting, so he jokingly announced it. The suspected offender, an illiterate named Lem Goldsberry, took issue with the light-hearted announcement and attacked Bender. Bender was able to subdue him but during Goldsberry’s attempt to claw Bender’s eyes, Bender bit him. The finger became infected and it was later amputated.

The feud heated up further and culminated on December 14th:

Goldsberry drove past the Alfred Cooper home in his spring wagon, taking his two boys and a little Harry boy home from school. A few minutes later Pete rode into the Cooper yard to visit with Alfred and Bird Cooper. Pete was going to marry Bird Cooper. “I saw Lem back there,” Pete explained, “and he seemed to be in an ugly mood. I think I’ll wait here and give him time to get up the road.” He soon rode on, giving Bird a special good-bye smile and left. But Lem was waiting and had turned his team across the road to block Pete’s passage. The Harry boy recalled later that Lem drew his gun as Bender approached. As he dismounted from his horse, Pete pleaded, “Lem, Lem, don’t shoot.” Lem’s four fingers tensed and tightened on the handle of his gun. Pete turned to his horse. A shot rang out and Pete fell face forward to the ground with blood oozing from a gaping wound in the back of his head. Lem had then driven on to his home, satisfied that the loss of his finger had been avenged. Then, accompanied by his oldest son, he drove to Marysville and gave himself up to Sheriff Bentley. He did five years and left prison an embittered man, shunned by his community and his own family because he’d besmirched the family name.

 http://www.marshallco.net/beattie/hisstory1.html

Lina Cooper Debo

Noted Oklahoma historian Angie Debo's favorite aunt was Bird. In the book, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, University of Oklahoma Press by Shirley A Leckie, 2000, Angie's mother, Alfred's daughter Lina, was having none of Bird's dramatic nonsense over the death of Peter, which was spurred on by Alfred's wife Angie.

"Twenty-eight-year old Bertella Rosina, better known as Bird, was Angie's favorite aunt. Following her fiance's murder seven years earlier, Bird had been photographed, at Grandmother Angeline Cooper's insistence, in a black dress and widow's veil. Ever since then, Bird had seen herself as the "heroine of a romantic novel." Lina, impatient with her mother's and her sister's theatrics, informed Angie that their actions were foolish and arose from Angeline Cooper's attachment to "sentimental stories" that exaggerated the "romantic strain in her nature" - to everyone's misfortune."

Alfred & Angie's seven children were:

Elmer Cooper
Angie Debo Collection
Oklahoma State University

Alfred D., who you can read about here. He resided in Michigan for most of his life.

Lina, who married Edward Debo and can be read about here and here. These were the parents of Oklahoma historian Angie Debo.

Lieu Forrest was born while they lived in Iowa in March 1868. He married Grace Decker. They had three children: Ralph, Lewis, and Alfred James II Lieu and family also came to Oklahoma and he died in Garfield in 1940. His wife survived until 1944.

Ida Louise was born 12 Jul 1869 in Fairbank, Iowa as well. She married Zebedee Halsted of Decatur, Illinois in about 1893. They had four children: Mattie, Nellie, Pearlie, and Burton.Ida died 21 Aug 1953 in Independence, Jackson, Missouri. She lost Zeb 02 Oct 1924 in Independence.

Lieu Cooper
Angie Debo Collection, Oklahoma
State University

Bertella "Bird" Cooper also went with the family to Oklahoma. After the death of her fiance, she never married. She died in 1924 in Garfield.

Elmer J. Cooper was born 14 Oct 1874. He died in 1947 in Marion, Washington. It's believed he got to Marion in the 1920s. He was buried in Garfield, Oklahoma.

Nettie was born in Nov 1879. She remained single from the looks of things and spent much of her life (from at least 1913) in Oklahoma City boarding houses as she worked as a public stenographer. I haven't pinned down her death, but she was alive at least through 1933.

It looks like Alfred and Angie did not live together at the end of their lives. Both are listed as widowed in the 1910 census, with Angie living with Elmer and Bird in Marshall, Oklahoma and Alfred living in Major, Oklahoma with his daughter Ida Halsted and family. Angie died in 1915. In 1920, Alfred is living in Marshall with the Debo's. He dies in 1928.

Trailblazing Women: Angie Debo, Historian, Part 2

Angie & Mother Lina

To see Part 1, go here.

Angie Debo craved education and dove right in between chores at home where her mother worked with her to teach her how to keep a home and farm animals while Edwin helped his father in the fields. The pair made the two-mile trek through pastures to get to school for the few months each year it was in operation. The quality of the teaching varied widely in the one-room schoolhouse, depending on what teacher blew through, but it was critical to Angie that she attend. In these early days of school, she heard some of the history of the native people's which would sew the seeds of her primary interest many years later. Students studied The kids got through the eighth grade, which was as far as they could go until a high school was built. She passed her territorial examination.

In 1905, Marshall opened their new high school which only provided a 9th grade. She finished that and waited again.

Having from a young age decided that she would not marry and have children, but instead a career, a friend from youth recounted one story of Angie having shown an interest in a fellow student, but she did not pursue it and the boy finally moved on. She would apparently have no beaus during her lifetime.

Not idle while waiting to continue her education, she read the newspapers, soaking up everything she could learn about the greater world there and by listening to the men in town talking politics. But, with nowhere to go from there, she started teaching in the rural schools in Logan and Garfield Counties. At that time, all you had to have done is complete 8th grade and pass that territorial exam. She apparently liked the $33 she earned each month but it wasn't an easy job. She moved from school to school over the next bit of time, but firmly established class control in each location despite her diminutive size and lack of experience.

Finally, in 1910, Marshall added the final high school grades. She spent the next three years studying hard and in 1913 was one of nine students who graduated from the first graduating class of Marshall High School. She was by then 23 years old.

For the next two years, she continued to teach in the rural schools, but then attended the University of Oklahoma, studying history under EE Dale, who taught the first history course on the American Indian. After graduating in 1918, she taught high school for five more years until she could afford to earn her master's degree at the University of Chicago which she wrapped up in 1924.

While working on her doctorate, she taught almost ten years at West Texas Teacher's College. Her dissertation was described like this:

"At a time when most historians of American Indians wrote from a non-Indian perspective based largely on government documents, she utilized these sources but also incorporated oral history, tribal records, and anthropological studies. At the time, she did not think of her treatment as something new, but later researchers point to The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic(1934) as one of the early examples of an ethnohistorical approach. Her book received the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association as the most important contribution to studies in American history in 1934."

Oklahoma Historical Society 2009

Edwin and Ida

When Angie left WTTC, she moved back to Marshall to live with her parents. While there, she wrote several more books on Indian history and issues. It was also during this time, her beloved brother Edwin developed Hodgkin's disease. Only married three years to Ida Henneke, he died in 1931, having been cared for by his mother, sister, and wife.

The 1930s and 1940s led to working on two WPA projects. The first was in 1937 and was related to the native tribes in oral history and the other related to the history of Oklahoma, which she worked on in 1940. Her father died in 1944. In the 1950s, she worked as a researcher and librarian at was once Oklahoma A&M.  Angie wrote a total of nine history books, co-authored one, and edited three more, including her final book, "Geronimo," in 1976. Her beloved mother Lina, with whom she was also exceptionally close, died in 1954.

Her later years included lots of writing, from articles to book to periodicals. She also became involved in the civil rights movement and the ACLU on behalf of Indian causes.

"With her lifelong commitment to social justice, Debo served on the Oklahoma board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1985 Oklahoma honored her work by placing her portrait in the Rotunda of the State Capitol. In 1988, at age ninety-eight, Angie Debo received the Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association. She died two weeks later on February 21, 1988."

Oklahoma Historical Society 2009.

Angie, 1935

Angie Debo died 21 Feb 1988 in Enid, Oklahoma. All of Angie's papers and records were donated to Oklahoma State University. I highly recommend you visit the website and also read Shirley Leckie's book on Angie as a great source of information regarding the entire Alfred Cooper family, including Angie.

Sources:
Shirley A. Leckie, Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000).
Patricia Loughlin, Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo and Alice Marriott (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005).
Blackburn, Bob L. "Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame - Angie Debo," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 72, no. 4 (Winter 1994-95): 456-59.
Oklahoma Historical Society, Debo, Angie Elbertha (1890-1988), 2009, http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DE002
Oklahoma State University, The Angie Debo Collection, 2016, http://info.library.okstate.edu/debo

Trailblazing Women: Angie Debo, Historian, Part 1

Marshall, Oklahoma 1902

COOPER, William > COOPER, Amos > COOPER, John L > COOPER, Alfred James > COOPER, Lina m. Edward Debo > DEBO, Angie Elbertha

One might not have expected this girl, born in 1890 in Beattie, Kansas into a family of restless pioneers who barely scraped out a living from the earth in spots throughout the midwest would become a noted historian, but she did. Angie Debo, Oklahoma historian specializing in the Native American history, was the product of a mother whom she described as a "practical feminist," who believed a woman's role was not merely to help "her man," but to enjoy the fruits of their joint efforts equally. Strong words for a turn-of-the-20th century wife and mother. It led Angie Debo away from a path of marriage and children into the world of higher education where there were only a handful of opportunities for women.

Edward Debo and Lina Cooper

Lina, Angie's mother, was born in September of 1865 in Illinois. She was the oldest girl and second of seven children born to Alfred James Cooper and his wife Marian Angeline Willard. Alfred seemed not to have the best luck with farming, constantly coming up against nature and the economy of the time. In 1859, just two years after his marriage, he left his home in Illinois and walked west to California, in hopes of finding a fortune or some better fortune, at any rate. Apparently, he came back two years later, much thinner, but no richer. He and his wife and two kids headed to the land of rich northeast Iowa soil about 1867 and spent the next several years living in Buchanan County, Iowa. Then, it was on to Rooks County, Kansas in 1879. Lina's older brother, Alfred D. Cooper's children are highlighted here.

Lina didn't have a chance at an education as she was needed to help provide for the large family of seven children by caring for the youngest five and then was sent out to work as a child care helper to young mothers in town for fifty cents a day. The soddie they lived in was leaky and buggy. In 1883, the family was faced with, what was described in Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, as a "starving time." Things couldn't get much worse. Alfred then moved his family on to Beattie.

Lina met a young man in Beattie named Edward Debo. Peter Debo, his father, had benefited from Napolean Bonaparte's acquisition of much of the Prussian territory in the early 1800s. His family settled along the the Rhine. Post-Bonaparte, Peter bristled under the Prussian rule and headed to the United States in 1854. Once he got to Illinois, he married Edward's mother, Elizabeth Hoppmeier in Illinois. Edward was a very industrious young man and Lina an incredible industrious young woman and it would become a very good, long-lasting match once they married in 1889.

Angie & Edwin

Angie came along first, born on 30 Jan 1890 in Beattie, followed less than two years later by her beloved brother, Edwin, who was born 24 Aug 1891. Unlike many farm families, either by design or by circumstance, they limited their family to two children. The children benefited greatly from the extra attention and both would crave education and other opportunities that they may not have had were they two of a dozen children.

At the age of nine, her family decided to move south from Welcome, Kansas, where they had sold the railroad land they had purchased just a few years before at a tidy $900 profit, to the Oklahoma Territory, which was still booming even ten years after the land grab began in 1889. On 8 Nov 1899, when the Debo's and Lina's parents and some siblings arrived,  Oklahoma was still a rugged place, but there were established towns and farms that would perhaps cause them a little less work once they arrived. Edward moved the farm equipment along the route south and Lina drove the covered wagon.

"...the young girl, seated beside her mother, peered out of a covered wagon at the houses, a story and a half tall; their red barns; and the "green wheat stretching to the low horizon." Where, she wondered, were the Indians? She knew they lived in Oklahoma, but all she had seen so far during her family's travels from Welcome, Kansas, to this small town were homesteaders in frame or sod houses and an occasional rancher or cowboy.

Returning to his separate wagon, sagging with farm equipment, Edward signaled his wife to follow in hers, which was crammed with furniture, dishes, utensils, canned fruit, clothing, and a few precious books. After driving about five miles southward, the family arrived at their new home. It was, Angie, discovered, a one-room shack, probably twenty by twenty feet. The farmer who had patented the land in 1889 had sold out when property values increased beyond expectations. Like many others, he was seeking new profits farther west.

Spotting a tree near a creek, the two children climbed its branches looking for a place where their father could build a playhouse. Meanwhile, the parents unpacked the family's belongings and prepared the evening meal. In their mid-thirties, Edward and Lina Debo were starting over, but each brought to this venture resiliency forged from previous encounters with hardship."

Angie Debo: Pioneering Historian, University of Oklahoma Press by Shirley A Leckie, 2000

There life in Oklahoma had begun. Next up, her rugged educational path.