COOPER, HORATIO C.: ?-1864
Horatio C. Cooper , son of John Cooper, a farmer and teacher, was probably of English birth. He was a member of one of the families which purchased farms in the so-called English Prairie, Edwards County, Ill., during the development of those lands for sale to English middle-class farmers and tradesmen by Richard Flower and Morris Birkbeck in the early 1820's.
The Cooper family was one of those which were attracted from the English Prairie to New Harmony by the Utopian community which Robert Owen proposed to set up there in 1825. The Coopers, with other English families, withdrew from Owen's community shortly before its dissolution and leased and later purchased lands about a mile east of the town, where they set up a cooperative farming project which was soon divided into private holdings.
Horatio C. Cooper married Laura Moore and had, at one time, substantial business interests in New Harmony and served in the Indiana Legislature. About 1860 he moved to St. Paul, Minn., where he died in 1864.
Beginnings of Printing in Indiana; and History of Posey County, Indiana.
- The Adventures of a Foreigner; a Poem. In Addition Are a
Number of Incomplete Patriotic Songs. New Harmony,
Ind., 1843.
