Cooper Family Papers

In spirit, these Cooper family papers, acquired in 1986, are gathered around the person of William Cooper (1798?-1864) of Hudson County, New Jersey, an early American naturalist of relative professional reputation. In substance, however, the body of the collection rests on the correspondence of his daughter, Frances Cooper--with her sisters, grandmother and especially fiance and later husband, Emil Cuntz, a successful German merchant.

The collection, which ranges wildly from an 1842 letter to the William Cooper couple from his in-laws to newspaper clippings of his grandson Herman Cuntz's wedding in 1900, is arranged in terms of Frances' correspondences. The two sets of correspondences between Francis and Emil each combine their exchange of letters so that a sense of the original dialogue is retained. Otherwise the correspondences are assembled according to the letters received by a given individual, which in most cases is again Frances. An exception is made when single letters exist, each for a different individual, in which case they are combined.

The pursuits of William Cooper are nevertheless worth brief mention for they flavor the milieu in which Francis and her correspondents found themselves. (A more extensive account can be had in A Biographical Sketch of the Late William Cooper ... N.J.-Y QH31.C778.) William Cooper came into enough wealth to allow himself the then rare life of an American gentleman/scientist. At a time when most fellow Americans were preoccupied with subduing the earth, William was busy collecting and cataloging its life forms. William seems to have come into contact with the right people, for other gentlemen, who could appreciate and foster his interests, steered his energies in a semi-professional direction in a period when American natural sciences were still in their formative stages. As a result, when William was not founding science societies in the United States, he quite often found himself in Europe comparing notes and networking in scientific circles there (the visiting cards reflect this).

In later years, the first generation of trained American naturalists began to intrude in William's bailiwick, and he felt himself nudged into more esoteric endeavors. Occasional references are made to these latter projects when Frances and her correspondents mention "Pa's diggings and shell collecting," confirming her father's retreat into mollusk taxonomy. Although none of his daughters (Francis, May, Jenny and Kitty) were apparently involved in his actual work, sons J.G. and Willi were intimate participants, accompanying their father (who was congenitally frail) on field trips. Physician son J.G. also pursued related avocations on his own. As for the daughters, they seemed to have been satisfied with the pleasant contacts they made with their father's often young, mostly educated friends. Just like his father-in-law, "the honest lawyer" of Troy, N.Y., E. "Squire" Wilson, William appears to have been a relaxed, benevolent patriarch who was quite accessible to his children. He, for example, shrugged off any doubts others may have had for him about Frances' betrothal to foreigner Emil.

All of William's children received elite educations, and judging from the ease and delight with which they employ English and an occasional foreign language in their letters, they were contentedly confident in their skills. Articulate, though not particularly erudite, whether writing from Troy, Cleveland (where the Wilsons later moved) or Hoboken, N.J., the letters are replete with accounts of parties, social clubs, fast sleigh rides (the loose equivalent of "dragging" main). On the whole, the sisters and their Grandmother Wilson's letters--with her hyper-awareness of the weather--offer an interesting pastiche of the concerns and trappings of upper class women in the second third of the nineteenth century--men, parties, health, religion, houses, clothes, servants, friends and outsiders. Little is mentioned of the locales themselves except in terms of updating the reader on the rise and doings of the Jones'. Cleveland, however, is singled out now and then as being distinctly well kept, suggesting that the pervasive western phenomenon of boosterism was alive and well there. Ultimately the letters project a traditional, singular focus on familial housekeeping--simply maintaining ties while apart--and are best considered in that light.

The Frances/Emil correspondence of 1862 is an exceptional variant of the basic keep-in-touch concern because it spans a period of their engagement when Emil is in Europe and Frances back in the United States. Emil here was much more forthcoming than he would prove to be in the 1880's exchanges, possibly reflecting his engaged status. The trip to Europe allows him to defend the Union cause before unmoved Britishers and to present his engaged self to his family in Germany, all the while imagining Frances at his side and the impressions she would relish. Frances, in the meantime, struggles furiously to keep busy enough to preempt a consuming pining for Emil. When he leaves a few letters unanswered, Frances is thrown into a fit of self-doubt and misgiving about Emil's real intentions. As the flow of the letters starts up, she becomes more "christian" and her faith in Emil is restored unto marriage.

The 1880's exchanges are bunched around several of Emil's business trips after the couple has been married for about twenty years. Frances provides Emil with an updated registry of Hoboken people and things, pays bills, business associates and muses over her "performances of the deserted housewife" while missing Emil "dreadfully in the evenings." Emil, conversely, resorts to telegrams and terse telegraphic letters, so few and far between that this almost does not qualify as an exchange since the telegrams are not preserved. He was evidently busily plying a business circuit of mid-western cities with preponderantly German populations (e.g., Milwaukee, St. Louis and Louisville), while juggling these with trips to his native Brunswick, Germany, often with an eager child in tow.

The remainder of the collection consists of odds and ends encompassing its entire timespan. These include a collection of visiting cards received by William Cooper (containing one from knighted British botanist Sir James Edward Smith), loose envelopes, notes, receipts, property assessments and newspaper clippings.