Susannah Gourley Thompson, Oldest Rock Grove Resident

JOSEPH GOURLEY > SUSANNA GOURLEY m Daniel Thompson

We don't have a plethora of southern antecedents. Most come originally from the Puritan northeast US, not the more free-wheeling commerce-driven settlers who landed in Virginia and parts south.

Yet, the Gourley's had long been in Loudoun County, Virginia. Their origins are most likely Scottish and their presence in Virginia goes back until at least the mid 1700s. I've found indications that they were Quakers. Waterford, the town in which Susanna's father Joseph was born, was a Quaker settlement started by Pennsylvanian Amos Janney in 1733. Joseph and his wife Grace Morgan's antecedents started from Pennsylvania. I'm slowly chipping away at the story.

The birthday gift giving list looks like
Who's Who of my family tree

Susanna was one of at least eight children born to Joseph Gourley and Grace Morgan. In some of my research of Grace's family, it appears they may have been part of the Keithian Quakers, a group that split from the Friends in 1690 over disagreements on things like water Baptisms, which the Quakers had foregone some time previously. These Keithian Quakers often ended up as Baptists. If you hear the term Baptist Quaker or Primitive Baptists, that's most likely what's being referred to. It walks like a Quaker and talks like a Quaker, but isn't a Quaker. This makes sense as most of the Cooper's who settled in Iowa ended up as Baptists.

This interesting story comes from a Gourley relative, Patty, who shared the information online:

"A letter from Mary Verniece Byrd, one of the descendants of Susannah Gourley Thompson, dated April 18, 1973, to Reeva Decker. Susannah Gourley, born 1801, married Robert Thompson, born 1799, in Louden County, Virginia. She was born in either Pittsylvania County or Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Susannah Thompson had a son Scott who was much younger than her other children and full of the devil. Scott's wife Marietta was alive in 1937 as my little boys and I stopped to visit her a few hours in passing through. It is through her that I got my history about Susannah Gourley Thompson as she knew her well before she died. She told me that Susannah Gourley Thompson said that she well remembered the War of 1812. She had 3 brothers who fought in it. Her father - Joseph Gourley- was too old but he hauled provisions to the soldiers at Point Lookout, Maryland. If you look on your map it is a point south of Washington, D. C. at the edge of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River joined. She said she wore a blue dress and stood in a wagon, and waved a flag as the soldiers marched by. She would have been at least 11 years old." 

Susanna married Daniel Thompson about 1819. Daniel was born about 1800 in Virginia. Unfortunately, after having 11 children, he died in his 40s after their arrival in Stephenson County, Illinois.  Susanna's siblings spread out as well, some staying in various parts of Virginia and some moving to Clark and Crawford County (remember, there was a very large contingent of Quakers in the area), and then on to Livingston County or Stephenson County, and one to Champaign County, Ohio.

Susanna's son Daniel, born in 1828 in Virginia, married into the Quaker Cooper family, marrying Ann Cooper on 05 May 1850 in Illinois. They had seven children before he died prematurely at age 37 in Osage, Mitchell County, Iowa in 1864. His will made his wife not only the beneficiary of his estate, but the sole executor of Daniel's will.

Susanna's daughter Margaret Ann, was born 28 Oct 1821 in Virginia. She married a Cooper, as well, marrying Chalkley Jared Cooper on 28 Jul 1840 in Crawford County, Illinois. C J and Margaret had nine children before Margaret's death in 1880 in Rock Grove. CJ survived until 1885.

Susanna eventually became Rock Grove's oldest citizen. She had her 83rd birthday in 1884, but she still had a lot of life left in her. She resided with son-in-law CJ Cooper in some of the last years of her life. "Grandma Thompson," as she was known by all, lived on to the age of  97 and died of complications of age cared for by her daughter Grace. She outlived all but two of her children.

I hope to talk a little more about some of the other Thompson kids in a future post.

Captain Robert T Cooper

WILLIAM COOPER > AMOS COOPER > CHALKELY JARED COOPER > CAPT ROBERT T COOPER m Emma Brenizer

Robert T Cooper was the first-born child of Chalkely Jared Cooper, Sr and Margaret Ann Thompson, in Clark County, Illinois on 24 May 1841. The family removed to Rock Grove, Stephenson Co., Ill., in 1844. As a youth he worked on the family farm in the summer months and attended school during the winter.

He was sworn into the US Army on Sept. 10, 1861. He was mustered into the service as Sergeant of Co. "B," 46th Regiment Illinois Infantry, on Sept. 14, 1861, at Springfield, Illinois, and did camp and drill duty. He fought in the battle of Fort Donelson, Kentucky on Feb. 16, 1862, where his uncle, John A. “Jack” Thompson (son of Susannah Gourley and Robert Thompson) also served.

During the battle of Shiloh, Tenn., on April 6, 1862, he was severely wounded in the left arm and was furloughed home. He returned to his company and regiment at La Grange, Tenn., July 7, 1862. He fought with his company until the close of the war. He received his final promotion to Captain on Dec 23, 1864. He was mustered out at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jan. 20, 1866, and was discharged at Springfield, Illinois, Feb. 2, 1866.

When he arrived back in Stephenson County, the attended college in Peoria, Ill., and graduated in 1866. He went into the mercantile and grain business in Rock City, Illinois until 1869, when he was elected county treasurer. After he served 4 years, he moved to Seward, Nebraska and purchased the Blue Valley flour mill in Holmesville. Brother Joseph L Cooper worked with him in his business interests there.

He ran for and was elected as County Treasurer in 1881 and was considered for State Treasurer at one
point. He served two terms and then served as County Clerk for two years before returning to business pursuits.

He was married to Emma J. Brenizer in 1887. They had two children; the first died in infancy in 1888, their second, Emma, died at age 5 years in 1894. He engaged in farming and stock raising until 1890 when his wife died, three months after Emma’s birth. He then retired from active business at Seward, where he died 12 Sep 1916.

CASE SOLVED: Susan L Cooper

Amos Cooper > Chalkley Jared Cooper > Susan L Cooper

Bellingham, WA 1910

I complained recently about how difficult it is to trace women "back in the olden days" because of marriages and the loss of their original identity. In hunting down the children of Chalkley Jared Cooper, this really impacted my work.

Chalkley "Charley" Cooper and his wife Margaret Ann Thompson married in 1840 in Crawford County, Illinois and had nine children. They are, in order:

Capt Robert T Cooper > Emma Brenizer

Mary Ellen Cooper > Jacob M Fisher

Barton Gourley Cooper > (1) Mary Magdaline Bollinger (2) Alice Bollinger

Joseph L Cooper > Carrie L Miles

Margaret Anna "Annie" Cooper > George Emrick 

Amy/Ann Cooper (mystery to be solved)

Susan Lavica Cooper > William May "May" Jones

Chalkley Jared "Jay" Cooper, Jr. > Minnie Janet Kaup

Harlin Cooper (year of birth unknown, died young before 1880)

I found very little to support Susan's existence until I found an obit for Joseph L Cooper. It said he was survived by "a sister, Susie Jones Bellingham of Washington." Hmm. 

Then, I found the Washington Death Records. They list an incorrect first name for her father, but the last name was correct. A person who put a family tree on Ancestry had the wrong first name for her husband which sent me down a road to futility. Doing some tricky backwards detecting, I finally found, and definitely confirmed Susan's story and her later lineage. The gap in information from 1881 to 1899 due to the infamous missing 1890 US Census could be overcome! If she hadn't lived in Washington during those missing years, where was she? She wasn't back home in Stephenson County. Several of her brothers went to Nebraska. Maybe they were close by. 

Susan was born in 1853 in Stephenson County, Illinois. She moved west sometime prior to 1900 when she was both married to W. May Jones and living in Hiawatha, Nebraska. I also found reference they had also lived in Jewell County, Kansas in the 1880s - her brother Barton had also lived there in the late 1870s/early 1880s. They had three children in Jewell: 

Lyman Llewellyn Jones

Edward James Jones

Ira Truman "Casey" Jones

In about 1904, the family arrived in the wild west mining, lumber, fishing/canning town of Bellingham, Washington, where they settled, with the exception of their brief stint in Chilliwack New Westminster, British Columbia. Susan was a piano tuner and lived until 1934, when she died at the age of 81. Her husband May either sold or built sewing machines and farmed during his time in Canada and died prior to Susan on 15 Aug 1931 in Bellingham. Her children survived her. She died 16 Sep 1934.

Ira T. Jones was the fire chief of Bellingham under two administrations and served as assistant chief between political appointments. He retired in 1943. He had a giant cacti collection, which he began selling off in 1943. In 1946, he and his wife bought a beautiful new home. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1970. Ira died in 1978 in Bellingham, and Iona, his Icelandic wife, died in 1990 in Seattle.

Ira named his oldest child Clayton Cooper Jones, further reinforcing the theory that Susan had been found. Ira died in 1978.

I have more items to provide as proof, but will be posting these privately. I'm happy to answer any questions about this research. Fill out the contact form on this page and I'll get back to you!

The Miracle Braves of 1914: Leslie Mann

William Cooper > Amos Cooper > Chalkley Jared Cooper, Sr > Joseph L Cooper > Jessie Cooper

Young Les Mann

and Leslie Mann

The great extended Cooper clan of Pennsylvania was everywhere in the Stephenson/Winnebago counties area by the late 1800s. Amos, the first pioneer, who had settled in Clark County, Illinois had a large family which included Chalkley Jared Cooper and his wife Margaret Ann Thompson who had found roots in Stephenson County. They were successful and very well-regarded citizens of Rock Grove.They had nine children, the fourth being Joseph L Cooper, who headed west to Nebraska.

Joseph married his wife, Carrie Miles, born in Marengo, Iowa, on 26 Dec 1881 in Buffalo, Nebraska. He lived in Norfolk, and was later a day laborer in Lincoln and eventually ended up in Omaha, owning a second-hand shop. They had three children: Fred Harmon, who died at age 30 in 1914, Jennie, and Jessie. Jennie is not listed as a surviving child in her parents' obituaries, so I would guess she too died young.

Jessie met Leslie Mann, a star 4-letter man who attended Lincoln High in Lincoln, and married him immediately after his graduation, on 04 Mar 1911 across the river from Omaha in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Leslie was the son of Samuel and Minnie Mann of Lincoln. Leslie and his brother Chauncey (Channing) R Mann, both stood out on the athletic field. Both would make athletics/education/service their life's calling. Les looked back later in life on his greatest sports moment and he said it was the football game between Lincoln High and Omaha Central in 1909 or 1910. Football would remain the game he loved best.

Miracle Braves of 1914

Leslie attended Springfield YMCA college in Springfield, Mass, where he also 4-lettered. In 1913, he joined the Boston Braves and played in the World Series as an outfielder on the "Miracle Braves of 1914." The team had moved from dead last in the rankings in the last two months of the year and ended up taking it all in four games straight (you can read more about that here).

Les Mann as a Cub

In 1915, he moved on to play with the Chicago Cubs and played in the 1918 World Series between the Cubs and Boston Red Sox. It was while in Chicago that their only child, Leslie Mann, Jr., was born in 1918. Mann would have an RBI single off of the famous Babe Ruth in Game 4 of the 1918 World Series. He would later also play for the St Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and New York Giants.

Baseball wasn't the million dollar contract game then that it is now, so Les coached between seasons. He taught basketball at Amherst from 1915-1917, and Phys Ed at Rice Institute from 1919-1924. During the first World War, he worked at Camp Logan in Texas for two years. He was the head basketball coach for Indiana University in the 1922-23 and 1923-24 seasons and at Springfield College in the 1924-25 and 1925-26 seasons.

Once he retired as a player and coach, Mann became an advocate for baseball as an international sport. He founded the USA Baseball Congress and organized a 20-game tour of Japan in 1935. He was also largely responsible for baseball being selected as a demonstration sport for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He went on to found the International Baseball Federation, which organized an international championship in England in 1938, Cuba in 1939, and Puerto Rico in 1941.

Spalding Official Base Ball Guide

During World War II, he worked for the USO, first as director of the federal USO building in Tampa,
Florida, and later as director of the mobile division of the USO for the West Coast area.The family, after a life on the road, settled in the Pomona/Pasadena area of California and Les remained mostly retired after the War. Les wrote many books on various sports.

Coach Mann, Indiana University Basketball, 1922-23

Tragically, Leslie's California retirement was cut short. Despite his athletic background and good health, Les and Jessie were driving in Pasadena on 14 Jan 1962 when Les complained of feeling faint. Moments later, he had a massive heart attack, lost control of his vehicle, and hit two parked cars. Mrs. Mann survived the crash, but Les died of the heart attack that day at the age of 67. Jessie died 08 Jul 1969.

Jessie & Leslie's son Leslie grew up to serve in the US Navy during World War II as an Ensign. After the War, he attended Stanford Law School. He married and was a successful attorney in Pomona who later resided in Scottsdale, Arizona. They had a son, Leslie Mann III.