James Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington New Jersey on September 15,1789. James Fenimore Cooper was America’s first successful popular novelist and son on of the prominent Federalist William Cooper. Cooper was an exceptionally smart child and entered Yale in February 1803. Cooper was educated at Yale in preparation for a genteel life as a federalist gentlemen. In Coopers junior year at Yale he was expelled for executing many pranks. He even trained a donkey to sit in the professors chair and created an explosion by blowing up a dorm door. After being kicked out of school Cooper became a commissioned midshipman in the Navy on January 1, 1808.
Cooper was the eleventh of twelve children. James father, William Cooper founded Cooperstown NY. In 1796 James Cooper’s father was determined to make his home permanently in the town he had founded, which by that time promised to become a thriving settlement. William began the construction of a mansion, completed in 1799, which he n...