Researching William Cooper

Born and raised in Kent, he came to Australia as an adult and did not start playing competitive cricket until the age of 27. He returned to England as part of Billy Murdoch's 1884 tour.

A handy leg-break bowler, he was also noted for his services to Victorian Cricket where after his playing days he served as a state selector and later as vice president of the Victorian Cricket Association.

His great-grandson, Paul Sheahan, also played Test cricket for Australia.

Cooper served briefly in 1914-1915 as a lecturer in plant ecology at Stanford University before beginning his long career in the botany department at the University of Minnesota, where he taught from 1915 to 1951. Among his students at Minnesota were Henry J. Oosting, Murray Fife Buell, Rexford Daubenmire, Frank Edwin Egler and Arnold M. Schultz; the latter went on to teach "Ecosystemology" at U.C. Berkeley, and received U.C. Berkeley's "Distinguished Teaching Award" in 1992. Cooper was the president of the Ecological Society of America in 1936 and the president of the Minnesota Academy of Science in 1937. Other professional accolades included receipt of the Botanical Society of America's Merit Award in 1956 and the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1963.

Cooper's travels in Glacier Bay, Alaska, compelled him to lead scientists in nominating it as a national park or monument. He also established the oldest permanent plot network in post-glacial areas in the world in 1916 in the Glacier Bay basin, now maintained by Dr. Brian Buma at the University of Colorado. At the Ecological Society of America's 1922 meeting, Cooper headed a committee that drafted a resolution adopted by the organization and sent to President Calvin Coolidge asking him to name the bay a monument. His 1935 monograph on the late glacial and postglacial environment of the Glacier Bay Basin is considered a classic. Mount Cooper in Glacier Bay is named in his honor.

The Ecological Society of America recognizes Cooper's work in the discipline by bestowing its annual William Skinner Cooper Award on scientists who produce outstanding publications on geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession, or the distribution of plants along environmental gradients.

He was born near Bridgeport, Gloucester County, New Jersey, February 20, 1793 and attended the local schools. He engaged in agricultural pursuits. He was a member of the New Jersey General Assembly, from 1839 to 1841. He was elected as a Democrat to the 26th United States Congress (March 4, 1839 – March 3, 1841) and resumed agricultural pursuits until his death near Bridgeport on September 22, 1856. He is interred in the Cooper family burying ground, near Bridgeport.

Cooper was born in Bath, England. He started work as a teacher and immigrated at the age of 22 with his wife Ann to Upper Canada in 1793. In this early period after the American War of Independence, it was still largely frontier. They had one son and three daughters. Cooper started what was probably the first school in Toronto in 1798. He petitioned the government for more land to support this occupation and began to buy land on speculation.

He moved with his family to Yonge Street north of the then Town of York, Upper Canada in 1800. There he was appointed by the provincial government as an auctioneer and the coroner of the Home District, serving in the latter position until 1834. In 1801 he gave up teaching and opened Cooper's Toronto Coffee House, an inn that became a social centre.

Cooper and his family moved to the Lambton area in 1806, where he established mills (grist-mill, sawmill, fulling-mill). To encourage development, the government provided machinery for his first mill, on condition that he pay for it or replace it after 18 months. From this Cooper built what is described as the "first milling empire on the Humber." His mills provided basic services for the growing community: grinding its grains, processing lumber for building, and processing woolen cloth.

Cooper founded more businesses in the area: a distillery, cooperage, tannery, blacksmith's shop, store, and tavern. Through his complex of businesses, he owned a total of hundreds of acres on the Humber waterfront, including workers' housing for those who labored in his mills. He got involved in port operations in York, applying for land in 1815 and completing his wharf in 1817, the year the first steamboat operated on Lake Ontario.

Cooper sold his mills in 1827 to his son Thomas, and sold much of his waterfront property a year later. Cooper continued his other business at York as forwarder, commission merchant, and wharfinger until 1830, being closely involved with shipping and the port activities. That year he sold his wharf to Alexander Murray and James Newbigging.

After his wife Ann died, in 1829 Cooper married a second time, to Isabella Watson. They had one son together. Cooper died in 1840.

According to the New York Times: "His fundamental theory of education, which he often repeated, was that the ultimate goal of teaching should be, not how to make a living, but how to live. Nevertheless, he believed that the system of education in this country should break away from the older traditions of Europe and seek to express the cultural developments of the New World. In one of his last public addresses Dr. Cooper urged a complete reorganization of the education system in this country to bring the schools into closer harmony with modern conditions."