JOHN MILTON COOPER

1820-1849

Contributed By Don Rivara

John Milton Cooper was born 19 April 1820, in Owen County, Indiana, the youngest child of Isaiah and Elizabeth Montier Cooper. He was their only child born in Owen County, of which Isaiah was one of the founders. He was seven when the family moved to Pike County, IL, in 1827.

On September 4, 1842, John married Minerva Jane ("Jane") McClintock. Because John was the youngest child of the family, he and Jane remained living with John’s parents. The following year a daughter, Anjanette Cooper, was born on July 16, 1843, while John's two sisters, Mary Matheny and Rachel Matheny were enroute to Oregon with their families. About 1845 John’s Indian mother died, and the following year old Isaiah Cooper and his four sons and their families crossed the plains to Oregon. They settled in Yamhill County near John’s sisters. Accompanying the Coopers was Jane’s bachelor brother Frank McClintock.

John and Jane claimed some land on the south bank of the Yamhill River at its confluence with the Willamette River about ten miles from Wheatland, a town founded by his sister Mary and her husband Daniel Matheny. Living in the log cabin with John and Jane were old Isaiah and Franklin McClintock, according to the territorial censuses. Frank McClintock claimed land next to John and his sister. [This site can be reached by traveling to the eastern end of Neck Road, accessed at the southern end of Dayton, Oregon, off Wallace Road.]

On May 16, 1847, a son Robert Alexander ("Eck") was born. Later that year, when the pioneers of Oregon mustered an army to avenge the Whitman Massacre, John donated two boxes of caps (Bancroft's History of Oregon, Vol.1, p.685).

When gold was discovered in California, the news reached Oregon in the fall of 1848. Many Oregonians rushed south, hoping to make their fortunes. When Daniel Matheny and his sons returned from California about May of 1849, the Coopers were enflamed with gold fever by the gold dust they brought back. In June 1849 John, his father, and his brothers, and his sister Rachel Matheny and their families left their Oregon farms to seek California gold. They worked the area in a canyon about two miles west of the present town of Pilot Hill in El Dorado County, California. Today this canyon is called Cooper Canyon. A mining camp of tents, called “Johnson’s” developed there. Johnsons lay on the road along the American River from Auburn to Sacramento. Apparently John did not find much gold, for he opened a liquor store [bar?] in an adobe building that he probably built himself. He called it the Halfway House.

John had to have a source for the liquor he sold at his store, which would have meant trips to San Francisco and/or Sacramento. A young miner from Oregon, A. E. Burbank, later of Lafayette, Oregon, passed through Johnson’s in the fall of 1849. He recorded in his diary that he spoke to John. He said that John didn’t like California nor Oregon and wanted to return to Pike County, Illinois.

But John did not leave California. Burbank noted that there were many sick people in Johnson’s, including a doctor who lived there. An epidemic of “camp fever” was causing many deaths. That fall John, his father, his brother-in-law Henry Matheny, and his niece Sarah Jane Matheny Layson died from the disease, probably typhoid. The family members were buried in the cemetery at Sutter's Mill, now called Coloma. There were only wooden markers, which long ago disappeared.

Jane was in a difficult position without a husband. Her brother-in-law, Isaiah Cooper, Jr., who appears to have had some kind of partnership with his deceased brother, returned to Illinois in the spring of 1850. It was later claimed by Jane’s second husband in a court case that Isaiah had absconded with considerable assets belonging to his widowed sister-in-law. Whatever the truth of the matter, on May 30, 1850, Minerva Jane McClintock Cooper remarried, to one Samuel F. Staggs in Sacramento. They then returned to Yamhill County, Oregon in February of 1851. (Oregon Donation Land Claim records) They settled on the land on which Jane and John had registered a claim.

John's Oregon farm and other assets thus came under the control of Staggs. When Jane died in January of 1856, her two orphaned children, Anjanette and Alexander, went to live with their uncle and aunt, Enoch and Esther Cooper. Staggs refused to release the children's patrimony to them, so Enoch brought suit. The litigation forced Staggs to make regular payments. Henry Hewitt, husband of Enoch's niece Elizabeth Matheny Hewitt, put up the bond for Enoch as administrator. Apparently, in April of 1861, Henry asked to be released as Enoch's bondsman, claiming that Enoch did "not use due diligence to procure monies and effects belonging to the estate" and was "squandering the moneys and effects placed in his hands," thereby causing Hewitt to pay for liabilities. This probably indicates that Staggs was not paying on the judgment. It may indicate a rift between Enoch Cooper and Henry Hewitt, but, just as likely, it was a passing event. Frontiersmen were particularly litigious with one another. Or, the above may have been legal language to get Henry Hewitt out from his role as bondsman. These records are at the Oregon State Archives in the Old Yamhill County Administrations.

Staggs remarried July 27, 1862, to Mariah L.B.Duncan.

ANJANETTE COOPER MCKINLEY BARTON

1843-1922

Anjanette Cooper was the older of the two surviving children of John M. and Minerva Jane McClintock Cooper. Born July 16, 1843, in Pike County, Illinois, she was three years old the year the family crossed the plains to Yamhill County, Oregon. Anjanette was probably in California when her father died of camp fever in 1849, and probably returned in early 1850 to Oregon. There her mother remarried and there her mother died in the 1856 cholera epidemic.

An orphan at thirteen, she and her younger brother Alexander went to live with their uncle and aunt, Enoch and Esther Cowan Cooper. The Coopers sued the stepfather of the children, S.F. Staggs, for their parents' estate. Besides the children of Enoch and Esther, Anjanette grew up with her cousin, Isaiah Cooper, son of her Uncle William S. Cooper, whose wife had died in the cholera epidemic. Isaiah, too, came to live with Enoch and Esther. Anjanette had been with her uncle and aunt about seven years when,on March 26, 1863, she married Charles Alva McKinley, about three years her senior. Charles, the son of Alexander McKinley and Martha Packwood, had been born in Platte County, MO. The McKinleys, therefore, were probably long-time acquaintances of the Coopers.

About 1873 the McKinleys moved to Whitman County, Washington. Soon afterward, her uncle, Enoch Cooper, and his family moved to Whitman County from Oregon. Anjanette was to live out the rest of her life in the region of Eastern Washington and adjacent Idaho.

The McKinleys' children were (1) Leonard Milton McKinley, born April 4, 1864, Polk or Yamhill County, OR, married Margaret May Everest (1866-1943), Colfax, WA, October 14, 1884, died Spokane, WA, February 6, 1928, buried Riverside Cemetery, Spokane; (2) Edward McKinley, born ca.1866, Polk County, OR, died age 12 ca.1878, Whitman County, WA; (3) Martha McKinley, born ca.1867, Polk County, OR, married Edward Crane, December 26, 1885, Moscow, ID, last known to be living in Spokane; (4) Henry P. McKinley, born 1871, Polk County, OR, not married, buried Avon, MT; (5) Susan McKinley, born 1873, Whitman County, WA, married Fred Harrison, died Kellogg, Idaho (6) Thomas P. McKinley, born 1876, Whitman County, WA, died 1911, Idaho; (7) Charles Alva McKinley, Junior, born 1877, Whitman County, WA, married Susan Wilson, died May 9, 1958, Kellogg, ID; (8) Roy McKinley, born March 1880, Whitman County, WA, married Addie Voorhies (ca.1882-after 1980), February 3, 1903, Mullen, ID, died Kellogg, ID, 1968; (9) Walter McKinley (twin), born ca.1882, Whitman County, WA, killed in avalanche, Mace, ID,1910; (10) Angeline McKinley, born ca.1882 (twin), Whitman County, WA, died a few hours after birth.

The McKinleys at first lived in Yamhill County, OR, but moved to Lincoln, in Polk County a few years later. In 1872 the McKinleys moved to Whitman County, WA, to land on the Palouse River, where they raised sheep. In 1885 they sold this farm. In 1889 the couple separated and later divorced. About 1900 Charles was in a hospital in Lewiston, ID, when he mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. He was thought by the family to have gone to and died in the remote Salmon River country.

Alone with four children still at home, Anjanette moved to Kellogg, Idaho, a mining town about 1890. Turning over the care of her children to her son Leonard, Jr., Anjanette opened a boarding house between Kellogg and Wallace, ID, up the Burke Canyon Road. About 1900 she married Tom Barton, with whom she later operated a bakery, but the bakery was destroyed in the 1910 Kellogg fire. They again opened a boarding house in adjacent Wardner.

Anjanette's granddaughter, Mary Loux, recalled Anjanette relaxing during the evenings on the front porch of the boarding house, smoking a corncob pipe and playing her fiddle. She was corpulent and deaf and used an earphone, but was very jovial. She had some type of an anomaly, perhaps teeth growing outside her jaw. She kept this covered with high collars.

Anjanette and Tom were living in Spokane in 1919, when she died at the age of seventy-six and was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery there. Tom was also buried there. Anjanette's only brother, Robert Alexander Cooper, also died that year.

ROBERT ALEXANDER "ECK" COOPER

1847-1919

Alexander Cooper was born May 16, 1847, in Yamhill County, Oregon, shortly after his parents' arrival in Oregon. He was the second surviving child of John M. and Minerva Jane McClintock Cooper. When he was two, his father died in the California gold fields; when he was nine, his mother died and he went to live with his uncle and aunt, Enoch and Esther Cowan Cooper. He was seventeen when his aunt died in January of 1865. Four years later he married Abigale Morgan (1853-ca.1928), on February 27, 1869.

The U.S. Census of 1870 shows Alexander Cooper, age 23, farmer, living in Yamhill County with his wife, Abigail, 17, and son Milton, 3 mos. Also living with the young family was Frank McClintock, 40, farm laborer, born Ill. He was Alexander's uncle who had lived with John and Jane Cooper in the 1840's. Apparently he never had married and continued to live on with his nephew. In the 1870's Eck and Abigale moved to Whitman County, WA. In 1879, Eck and his family were living again in Yamhill County, Oregon, because the Daily Oregonian, on May 26, listed an obituary for a child of R. A. Cooper who had died near Wheatland from a fall into an open fireplace. (Page 4 Col.1) About 1885, Eck moved his family to Linn County, Oregon, near Lebanon. There they lived until about 1905, when they moved to the upper Peavine Road area near McMinnville, Yamhill County, OR.

Alexander and Abigale are said to have had eleven children but lost several in a home fire in the late 1870's. The surviving five children were (1) Mary Cooper, born January, 1880, married Clyde Schell (possibly a brother to Pearl Schell, who married Henry, son of James Patrick Cooper, Enoch Cooper's son); (2) Robert Earl Cooper, born June 22, 1882, married his second cousin once removed, Mary C. Burlingame (daughter of Emma Lumison, daughter of Jane Lumison, Enoch Cooper's daughter), 1905, killed in an accident, December 4, 1914, nr. McMinnville, OR, four children but no surviving grandchildren; (3) Minnie Cooper, born March 1884, married William Warfield, 1904; (4) Orla "Orley" Adolpheus Cooper, born October 6, 1885, Lebanon, Linn County, OR, married Hazel C. Clayton, March 7, 1913, died April 21, 1949; (5) Ellen Cooper, married Jesse Armstrong ca. 1910. The home fire story passed down may be true, but it may be a corrupted version of the death of one of Eck's children after a fall into an open fireplace at Wheatland, which did take place. [Oregon Democrat, 26 May 1879, p.4, col.1]

The couple was to endure yet another tragedy with their children. On December 4, 1914, Eck, 67, who operated a dairy some six miles west of McMinnville, OR, and his son Earl, 32, were returning home after hauling milk into town. They apparently had been drinking beforehand and were intoxicated. Earl stepped down onto the wagon tongue to drive the horses and was whipping them into a high speed when they approached a bridge. The front wagon wheel struck the bridge, which caused the two front wheels to break loose, throwing Earl's feet into the wheel spokes. His head was dragged under the axle for about 250 yards. His body was badly mangled. With the help of a wagoneer passing from the opposite direction, Alexander stopped the frightened horses by steering them into a fence, but parts of the wagon itself were scattered along the path of the accident. When Alexander finally stopped the wagon, he had assumed that Earl had fallen off the wagon upon the impact with the bridge and was horrified to discover his son's lifeless body under the wagon. Earl was buried in the Happy Valley Cemetery, where Alexander would later be buried.

Alexander survived his son by five years, dying November 26, 1919, at the age of seventy-two. His sister Anjanette had died earlier that year. His widow, Abigale, lived until about 1928.

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