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In reply to:
German-Jewish info on Henrick Cosper
Karyn Ulriksen 4/07/04
It turns out that this text was a typed reproduction of Quillie's essay as published in the Arizona Cattlelog, February, 1955; Vol. X, No. 5.This information that this was a typed copy was noted on the final page of the typed manuscript that I have.I have published it online at http://family.valkaryn.net/Cospers/qpc-cosper_history.htmlhttp://family.valkaryn.net/Cospers/qpc-cosper_history.html.However, I will post it in its entirety here, along with my preface.
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COSPER HISTORY
By Quillie Pugh Caskey
Mississippi College
Clinton, Mississippi
(Reproduced by Karyn Ulriksen, April 2004, Los Angeles, California)
Forward by Karyn Ulriksen
When I was a child, my grandparents and great grandparents would show me the photos and tell me the stories of our family.My great grandmother, Jewell Marie Cosper, daughter of William Cornelius Cosper and Eugene Bell Wilson, was cherished by the family.Although she could be stern, her most common disposition was patient and caring.She loved her family dearly and safely tucked away many documents and photos.After my mother died in 2001, I became the keeper of many of these documents.Among them was this Cosper history by Quillie Pugh Caskey.
This manuscript is noted to have been copied from the “Arizona Cattlelog, February, 1955; Vol. X, No. 5.”It is not clear who typed the copy for safe keeping by my family.Presumably, it was copied by my great grandmother, Jewell Marie Cosper, or (more likely) her son, Homer D. Cooke, Jr., who was familiar with “mechanical doohickeys” such as typewriters and, in fact, built out a full print shop in the back house after his retirement.
For readability, I have assumed the indicated original editorial marks and corrected some spelling errors.I have used the [sic] notation to indicate where I have not corrected an obvious spelling, grammatical, or word choice error.However, it is entirely possible that I overlooked others.
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The Cospers:Pioneers of the South and Southwest
By Quillie Pugh Caskey
Mississippi College, Clinton, Mississippi
“Here you may see my name.Rev. G.H. Cosper was born October 17 Day, 1773.Elizabeth Cosper was born 18 Day of January, 1779, South Carolina.”When the Rev. George Henry Cosper, inscribed these words on the flyleaf of the Bible from which he preached, little did he dream that within less than 200 years there would be thousands who could trace their ancestry back to him and his beloved wife, Martha Elizabeth.
The writer began her interested research on the Cosper family several years ago.But there have been many interruptions, and delays.And, although ofttimes working until exhausted, this article does not represent an exhaustive study.It is presented, however, with the fond hope that it will be read with interest, at least by some of the hundreds of descendacys who now reside largely in the South and Southwest.
This work was a matter of fact, undertaken by me in order to complete my “family tree,” and to satisfy a growing curiosity.But the work, which has been a “labor of love,” soon developed into a hobby, and this hobby has become almost an obsession.
Why this deep and abiding interest in a family, many members of who were ever moving westward?My answer – at the risk of being charged with eagertism – is that this pioneer family of mine which sided so materially in filling up the wide open spaces, was an exceptional, if not a remarkable one.Certainly its leadership was more than ordinary, because only dedicated leaders would have braved the dangers of this new country, pressed ever forward, and carved out of this frontier a new and better way of life for themselves and their posterity.
Tradition plays its role in this story, for much information for this article has been passed on to me by word of mouth and personal letters, other than recorded documents.However, the major portion has been obtained from family Bibles; inscriptions from tombstones; census, Masonic, church and courthouse records.The write is also indebted to F. M. Cross, author of “A Short Sketch-History from Personal Reminicences of Early Days in Central Texas;” Jess G. Hayes, author of “Apache Vengence;” A.D. Betts, author of “A History of Carolina Methodism;” and many state and county maps and documents.Last, but by no means least, I am deeply grateful to my husband Dr. W. M. Caskey,author of books and long time professor of history, political science and economics in Mississippi College and other colleges and universities, for his helpful suggestions, and painstaking revisions of this manuscripts.To all these, and many others, too numerous to mention.I express my deep and profound appreciation.
The immediate progenitor of the Cosper clan, that is the father of the Reverend George Henry Cosper was born in German, of German-Jewish parents.His wife was Dutch.This father, who had migrated to America about 1766, landed at Charleston, South Carolina.According to so-called “authentic family recourds,”he left Germany after have fought a duel with a count of the hand of a beautiful fraulein.He was victorious in this battle of swords.He killed the count, a fact which no doubt accounted for his hurried departure for America.
To this couple were born Jacob, George Henry, and Harmon P.There were no daughters.These three sons grew to manhood, married, and reared large families.A number of their children were born in Edgefield and surrounding district before these three brothers started their trek South and Southwest.
In the early years of the nineteenth century many settlers migrated from Virginia and the Carolinas to Georgia.Sparsely settled Georgia offered golden opportunities to those seeking large land holdings.Most of these settlers were descendants of those who had left Europe because of religious persecutions.A family was required to live in Georgia at least one year before it was eligible to draw for the maximum, 400 acres.Rev. George Henry Cospers, a Methodist minister, was one of these opportunity seekers who was undoubtedly motivated by “genuine missionary zeal, because, as will presently be shown, hebecause [sic] a noted “circuit rider,” and a “powerful camp meeting preacher.”But he no doubt had other motives.One was to acquire and speculate in lands.This is attested, not only by the fact he was, during subsequent years, involved in many land transactions, but also by the fact that he eventually became a man of great affluence in Georgia and Alabama.
But this remarkable character, the Rev. George Henry Cosper, who was located in the “Indian lands” in Georgia as early as 1821, did not confine his religious and land activities wholly to that sectionor even to the state of Georgia.We find him, according to authentic lands records of 1827, drawing “land in land lottery of Carroll County, “ Georgia [sic].In 1840 he was involved in the land transactions in Talladege County, Alabama.By 1847 he had migreated [sic] Pontotoc County, Mississippi, and bought and settled on a large tract of land.The next year, he was back in Georgia, in Spaulding County.The 1850 census reveals that this versatile man had become a resident of Randolph County, Alabama, where he died some ten years later.
It must be observed that the first generation of Cospers in South Carolina were “devout followers of Martin Luther, “ and that they established a small Lutheran church in Edgefield County.But this church was destined to be replaced by the Methodist, and the Cospers embraced that faith.The reasons for this change were logical.One was the difficulty of securing a Lutheran minister in this small German community.But the real influence was the visits of Bishop Asbury, the greatest circuit rider of them all.Suffice to say this consecrated Bishop not only converted the Cospers, but he ordained both George Henry and Jacob, and they followed in his footsteps, that is they became circuit riders along the roads and trails in the back country of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama; during all those same sterling qualities of character in their preaching that had enabled the great Bishop Asbury to proclaim the Gospel message, ofttimes under most adverse circumstances.
Just as the Rev. George Henry was born on the even of the American Revolution, so he passed away at the ripe old age of the even of another great civil conflict, The War Between the States for Southern Independence.This was not an unmixed blessing for him, because he was spared the heartaches, the tragedies, and the humiliations that were soon to be suffered by so many of his sons and daughters, and by the South that he loved so dearly.He was buried in Bethlehem Camp Ground Methodist cemetery in an unmarked grave near the church where he had preached so long and so faithfully.His devoted wife Martha Elizabeth Cosper, does sleep in a marked grave in this same cemetery, which is located just one mile north of Gaham [sic], Alabama.
Meanwhile the other preacher brother, the Rev. Jaco Cosper had also settled permanently in the Talldege County, Alabama, and had, before passing on to his richly earned reward, reared a large family of sons and daughters who in turn have left many worthy descendants to perpetuate and reflect credit upon the Cosper name.One among the many of these highly esteemed descendants is Anna Gray Sweeney Noe, wife of the ex-Governor, James A. Noe of Louisiana.She is his great-great-granddaughter.
The writer has discovered the tomb of one of Jacob’s son’s in the Mt. Tabor Cemetery, Shelby County, Alabama.He was the Rev. James Berry Cosper, one of the large number who have continued to carry the “Methodist minister” family tradition.The marker, erected to his memory by his children, has embossed on it a Masonic emblem and an open Bible with an inscription which gives the enlightening information what “Our Father, James B. Cosper was born March 6, 1796.Departed this life August 26, 1875.A Minister of the Gospel about fifty years.”
As had been stated, the Rev. George Henry Cosper and Martha Elizabeth Knapp Cosper reared a large family.There were eight sons and two daughters.All were born in South Carolina, except two.These consecrated parents were deeply devoted to these children and reared them “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”Their deep spirituality and abiding faith, which they instilled in the children at the family altar, was to serve them in good stead, not only during the tragic civil war years that were just ahead, but also during those heartrending years of adversity, which some encountered on the frontier as they migrated westward.
The writer has been unable to trace the subsequent history of the daughters, Martha and Harriet.The evidence would seem to warrant that at least one, or possibly both of them, married and left many descendants in Georgia and Alabama.The eldest son, Jacob F. reared a large family and has numerous descendants in Georgia and Alabama.William M., who lived in Beat thirteen of Randolph County, Alabama, also reared a large family (moved to Texas after the War).Edward, Joseph Berry and George Robert Perren also settled in Randolph County, Alabama.All three of them likewise reared large families.
The three sons of this large family of Cospers who were to play such a large role in the annals of the Southwest were Hampton Harmon, the Rev. Joel Henry, and James Glenn.The first named, Hampton Harmon, who was born in 1816 in South Carolina, was unquestionably the most restless, and venturesome of all the Cospers.The voluminous information available reveals that he and his brother, the Rev. Joel Henry graduated from a college in Charleston, South Carolina, and that he and his other brother, James Glenn, owned a large merchantile [sic] establishment, several plantations, and that they used slave labor before the war to manufacture many farming implements, wagons, and even shoes and clothing.
Hampton Harmon married Eliza Caroline Smith.This union was blessed with fifteen children, six sons and nine daughters.After her death, which occurred fifteen years after he moved to Texas, he married Dora Trammell Worley, a young widowed school teacher with one daughter.To this second union two sons and three daughters were born, making a total of twenty of his own children.All except to of these children settled in the Southwest, and two of them are still living.Mrs. Barabara Zaid Cosper (Richard) Sowell of Colorado City, Texas, and Milo Bert Cosper, the twentieth child.Milo Bert of Fort Worth, Texas, had this to say recently of the close relationship existing between him and his father:“We were great pals.”
Just why Hampton Harmon, who was engaged in such profitable enterprises in Randolph County, Alabama, should decide to go west is one of those unsolved mysteries.But some time shortly before 1851 Hampton Harmon Cosper, and others in his locality loaded their families and worldly possessions into ox-wagons and started west.Texas was their destination.The writer’s grandmother, Mary Ann Frances, and several of her sisters, including Emily, Martha, Manda and Eliza, were in the caravan.Mary Ann Frances said that when they had camped at nights in tents that the women would cook enough food for the next day’s journey;that “During the night they would often be awakened by fright between their two big watch-dogs and the wolves beating against the tents; and that “fires were kept burning all night to keep the wolves from coming inside.”
But they were not as yet destined to reach their “promised land,” because when they reached the swamps of the Mississippi River the “water was so high and the mud so deep that they were forced to turn back.”They settled once again in Randolph County, Alabama, and Carroll County, Georgia, where during the ensuing years, they sowed, reaped their crops and continued to“look beyond the horizon of the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge Mountain and to long for, to know, and to experience a new life in that much talked about fabulous Texas.”
Hampton Harmon made extensive plans for their second departure.He owned much land and many families of negroes.The negroes “all begged to go with him.”He was unable to grant this request. But he did grant to each family “a certain portion of land to cultivate for its own.”No sales or deeds were ever made or recorded.
The time set for this departure of these pioneers was September 15, 1854.When the designated day arrived, the covered wagons, drawn by horses and mules were loaded.Fond farewells were said with very heavy hearts, because this time two married daughters, and a number of grandchildren and relatives were being left behind at the home place, a large two story mansion which still stands.
These daughters of Hampton Harmon, soon demonstrated that they were strong and courageous women, for after the first grief over the departure of most of their loved ones, they set about building a new life of their own.Both had married in the interim between the first ill fated attempt to migrate to Texas and this second departure.Mary Ann Frances, who had married the Rev. Vincent King soon learned that a circuit rider’s wife must assume tremendous responsibilities.It meant staying at home, directing the farm activities and caring for their five lovely daughters.One of these five daughters, Emily Amanda Tommie, married Henry Tilman Pugh and became the mother of the six sons and three daughters.The writer is her eighth child.The other daughter of Hampton Harmon, Emily Caroline, married Marshall Williams, and soon experienced the real hardships of a typical pioneer mother.She became of the mother of sixteen children, thirteen of whom lived to be grown, married and reared large families.Her husband died in 1878.She passed away in 1925, after having lived a widow for 47 years.
But we must return to our Texas bound caravan.After a few months of travel, during which these pioneers endured extreme hardships and adversities, Hampton Harmon and his large party settled at Farmersville, Texas.He remained for several years ever increasing family.The first Texas born was named Texas Cordella.Masonic and other records reveal that Hampton Harmon Cosper lived, during the next few years in Bosque County, at Acton in Hood County and at Buffalo Gap in Taylor County.It was a Buffal Gap that he engaged in farming and ranching on an extensive scale for a number years before moving, as we shall presently see, further westward into New Mexico, Arizona, and eventually back to Texas.
We must, of necessity, pause here, first, to give a brief resume of the contribution of the Cospers to the cause of the Confederacy; and, second, to recount the interesting story of the last great migration of the Cospers from Alabama to Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.As has been stated again and again in the records, “the Cospers loved God, their families, home and country.”So, when the first call came for volunteers to serve in the Confederacy, “these men and boys” were amongst the first to volunteer.Some fifty Cospers are listed in the Confederate Records from Alabama, and a great number from Georgia, and Texas.Although he was 50 years of age, James Glenn Cosper volunteered in 1864 in Captain Larkin Breed’s Company “F” of Randolph Militia, along with his nephew, Joseph Berry Mark Cosper, a lad who was only sixteen.The Rev. Joel Henry Cosper served as First Lieutenant in the same Company.Hampton Harmon, who was passed the middle age years, is also listed among those Texas Cospers who volunteered, and the evidence warrants the assertion that he was wounded while serving in Texas and Arkansas in the Texas Cavalry.
Most of these Cospers returned home at the end of the war “without a scratch.”The younger ones married and have left large families to perpetuate their memory.But others were wounded, and several died on the field of battle.Some of these who paid the supreme sacrifice at Shiloh and Gettysburg, and on other battle fields, were Francis M. Henry “Buch”, William Marion and David Smith Cosper (son of Hampton Harmon)..Joel Henry lost two sons at Shiloh, and a younger brother, George Robert Perren, who died in a military hospital in Selma, Alabama in 1862, leaving a comparatively young wife and seven sons and daughters to mourn his untimely departure.But let us draw the mantile [sic] of charity over those tragic and heartrending years and return to our pioneers.
It was late October, 1869 when the Rev. Joe Henry, William M. and James Glenn Cosper, with their families turned their faces toward the west, and began what was to be the last great trek to Texas and Arizona.Many circumstances had conspired to cause this large party of rugged pioneers to take this decisive step.The most important reasons was no doubt the lure of the west. It was to them the land of adventure and golden opportunities.But the decisive factors must have been the ravages of the great war, which had left them, not only in a poverty-stricken condition, but also the prospects of a so-called “reconstruction,” with all of its evil social equality implications.
There were sixty-four children, forty-two adults and two former faithful slaves in this last great caravan.The oldest was the Rev. Joel Henry Cosper, who had passed his three score years.The youngest was his three weeks old grandson, who still lives with his wife on the original farm settled by his parents on the Lampasses [sic] River.There were also “twenty three hound dogs used for guarding the tents at night and hunting wild life by day” so that there might be an ample supply of meat for the trip.After many days of journey they crossed the Mississippi River on a dangerous flat-boat, and headed directly westward.The unusually heavy rainfall during that fall of 1869 had made of Louisiana almost a quagmire.But the Louisiana “settlers had built bridges, and had laid cross lays” for just such an emergency, although a small “toll fee was charged” for their use.These enabled the party to continue its journey, but at a retarded rate of much less than “eight miles per day.”
They crossed the Red River at Shreveport on a steam boat in early December, and turned towards the Southwest.The Christmas holidays were spent in Rusk County,Texas, and James Glenn and his immediate family remained here for one year.The large majority journeyed on westward, under the leadership of the Rev. Joel Henry Cosper, and they reached Bell County early in February 1870, where they pitch their tents in what was eventually to be their “promised land.”
Land in Bell County on the Lampasses [sic] River was rich and cheap.The best was selling for only fifty cents and one dollar per acre.These are no doubt the reasons why these pioneers settled permanently here, and later acquired large holdings and prospered.In fact, as the years passed the large families grew larger “even unto the third and fourth generations” – these Cospers seem to have become so deeply attached to that lovely section, that few cared to migrate elsewhere.They just stayed on and “multiplied and replenished,” as one of them, Mrs. Willie Zell Ray Hunt, stated recently, “until there are today enough Cospers in Bell County to put one under every bush.”Most certainly these descendants of the Rev. Joel Henry Cosper have made a tremendous contribution to the development of the great state of Texas, and Bell County.
Mary Eliza Bagby Cosper did not long survive this rugged frontier life in Texas.She passed away October 11, 1877.Ten years later, to the day, Rev. Joel Henry Cosper departed this life, a life which had been full, and rich, and fruitful.These two great ancestors sleep peacefully under the stars of Heaven in the Cosper family cemetery near the banks of the Lampassas [sic] River.
As was stated above, James Glen and Sarah Caroline Tendall Cosper and the four sons and two daughters who had accompanied them settled in Rusk County for one year.In the spring of 1871 this family continued its westward journey, and stopped first in Bosque County.It is not known how long they resided here, but we do know that they subsequently became neighbors of Hampton Harmon Cosper at Buffalo Cap, and that in 1866 these families, including their married sons, began another westward trek.Their destination this time was the new territories of New Mexico and Arizona.Some of the seemed to “have gone by train to Magdalena, New Mexico,” and then traveled by wagons and coach to the rich Luna Valley near the Arizona boarder, where they settled for a short period of time.
The following interesting excerpt is taken from a letter written at this time by one of the older men to a brother in Alabama. “… Everything is high in this country this year.Bacon is 10 cts., pork 6 to 7 (a lb.), corn 75 cts. (a bu.), wheat $1.00 (a bu.), coffee 3 to 4 cts. (a lb.).There are hundreds of miles of fine country all around us.What a pity that there are so many people scratching among those rocky, worn out hills, when there are so many fine rich valleys in this country covered over with grass which will fill a cow…”
Sometime before 1889 Hampton Harmon and two of his sons, Sylvester Swope, and Freeman Tullis, moved to Wilcox, and began “freighting” for the government between that place and Globe.It was on one of these trips that they were waylaid near night fall just out of Globe by some Apache Indians, and Tullis was murdered.This sneak attack, which occurred February 1869 is recounted in detail by Superintendent Jess G. Hayes of Globe, Arizona in his interesting book, entitled, “Apache Vengeance.”
Shortly after this tragedy the broken-hearted Hampton Harmon, who had also lost another son, George, and two daughters-in-law, one the wife of George, and the other the wife of Swope, decided to return to Texas.He was soon followed by Swope, the twelve orphaned children, and the widow of the murdered son.They settled in Coke County, and were living there when Hampton Harmon “died on a deer hunt near Alpine, Texas.”This old patriarch, who had reached the ripe age of 87 years 6 months and 21 days, was buried at Fort Chadbourne, Texas, and a beautiful Masonic marble monument marks his final resting place and that of his second wife Dora, who was buried by his side in 1932.
James Glenn Cosper and his four sons and their families settled around Duncan and Clifton, Arizona, and many worthy descendants still live in the section of the southwest.One son, Towles, who became a most successful rancher, and the “First County Supervisor of Greenlee County,” reared ten children, seven of who are still living.One daughter of James Glenn Cosper, Mrs. Sally Cosper Brewer, lives in Santa Ana, California.She is nearing her 92nd birthday, and enjoys the distinction of being one of the three living persons who made up that last great caravan, headed by her father, and the Rev. Joel Henry, which arrived in Texas in the early Spring of 1870.The other two survivors are Thomas Henry Cosper who lives near Killeen, Texas, and Edward Jackson Wiggins, of Gatesville, Texas.
James Glenn Cosper, who was two years older than Hampton Harmon, and five years younger than his brother Joel Henry, died in1891 at his home in Luna, New Mexico at the age of 77.As has been observed, his brother Joel Henry who had settled in Bell County, Texas, had preceded him in death in 1887, and the other of this remarkable triumvirate, Hampton Harmon, lived on until 1903.James Glenn Cosper’s devoted wife, Sarah also lived on for another quarter of a century before her death which occurred May 14, 1915.
It is with reluctance and certain misgivings that I bring this somewhat rambling story to a rather abrupt end.I realize that many interesting and exciting episodes and heroic exploits must, in a study of this nature, go unrecorded.I am also not unmindful of the fact that I have no recorded the contribution s of those hundreds of Cospers who have lived more recently, or are now living.Perhaps this should be undertaken in a subsequent study.It is, however, my sincere wish and fondest hope that the many descendents of the Cospers who per chance may read this resume, will be brought to the realization that our fathers and mothers, and most especially these three brothers, the Rev. Joel Henry, James Glenn, and Hampton Harmon Cosper, have left us a rich and glorious heritage.Certainly they wrought wisely and nobly and well, and I, for one, feel that it is our duty, in fact, our solemn obligation, to perpetuate the memory of those great pioneers whose lives have been both an inspiration and a benediction.
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James L. Cosper 6/01/05