Continued from March 2008
From Don Rivara…
Thomas C. Cooper*abt. 1705-1785
Mary Unknown*abt. 1710-abt. 1791
Joel Cooper
Thomas Cooper left nothing to his son Joel in his will, yet he made him the executor of the will. This suggests that Joel was provided for during Thomas’ lifetime or that Joel was very prosperous. Born about 1743, Joel may have been the Cooper son captured by Indians in 1753. He was married 5 November 1764 to Courtney Roberts in Norfolk County, VA. He appears in the Hampshire County, VA [WV] censuses in 1782, 1783, 1784, and 1785.
After settling the estate of his father in 1785, Job appears to have left Virginia. On September 12, 1786, he and his brother Thomas II leased out 146 acres on Patterson Creek in Hampshire County that they apparently owned jointly. Witnesses to the lease were Job Cooper, David Cooper, and Arjalon Price. Thomas II moved to his inherited land on Allegheny Mountain and Job moved to the Watauga River Valley in what is today the easternmost tip of Tennessee. The 1787 tax list shows that Joel owned 150 acres on Sinking Creek. On January 20, 1788, Joel Cooper, Jr., married Elizabeth Job with Joel Jr.’s uncle, Job Cooper, as surety. In March of 1819 Joel Sr. made his X to sell 180 acres there to his son Joel Jr. Joel Sr. died in Carter County, Tennessee, in 1825. [By then the portion of Washington County where the Coopers lived had become Carter County.] In his will, he left his “plantation” to Joel, Jr., and divided the proceeds of the sale of the rest of his property among his other heirs. Joel Jr. remained in Carter County and died there in 1858. (to be continued in the next newsletter)