GEORGE WASHINGTON COOPER
(1866-1938)
George Washington Cooper was born on the 10th day of April 1866, the eighth child of Alexander and Barbary Cooper. He was probably named for Alexander's younger brother, George W. Cooper.
G. W. was born almost exactly one year after his father's return from serving in the Confederate Army. He grew to manhood on the Cooper home place in Saline Township of Hot Springs County during the reconstruction period. G. W. had dark hair and blue eyes.
At the age of twenty, in May of 1886, G. W. Cooper was married to his second cousin, Nancy A. Clift. Nancy was the daughter of Norris Calvin and Charity Brumbelow Clift. Nancy had been born in Hot Springs County in September 1868, and was a few months shy of her eighteenth birthday when they married.
G. W. and Nancy settled down on a farm near Traskwood where their first child, Alice, was born on the 20th of March 1887. Two years later on June 27, 1889, a son was born. They named him James Elbert, after G.W.'s oldest brother, James Cooper.
In 1892, a daughter was born to G.W. and Nancy, and they called her Cricket. She lived only a short time and was buried at the Fairplay Cemetery.
A few months after the death of Cricket, G.W., Nancy, and their children were riding in a wagon near their home when it hit a large rock and Nancy was thrown from the wagon and injured. She was taken home and the doctor sent for, but her condition worsened. A few days later on January 9, 1893, with six-year-old Alice and three and a half-year-old Elbert standing nearby and G. W. sitting in a chair next to her bed, Nancy Clift Cooper died. As G. W. wept he told the young children, "I have a home up yonder." He was grief stricken at the loss of his young wife.
Nancy was buried in the Fairplay Cemetery next to her baby daughter, and a few days later G. W. packed the children's clothes and took them to his oldest brother, James. Immediately afterward G. W. left Hot Springs County and roamed around the country for several months.
When he returned for his children, Jim and his wife, Emily, had become attached to them and refused to return the children to G.W. A fight ensued and shots were fired. G.W. later expressed his belief of having been lucky to have escaped with his life. Jim told him if he ever returned again he would be shot.
G. W. again left Hot Springs, County and roamed around the country working for the railroad where he eventually became an engineer. Later he married Willie Herndon Tissue, and they were the parents of six children: Dave, Opal, Helen, Carmon, Charlene, and George W. Cooper, Jr.
G.W. worked for the railroad for the remainder of his life. He and Willie lived in several counties of Arkansas as well as Bossier Parish Louisiana. For a brief period G. W. worked for the railroad in Colorado and in the mountains of New Mexico.
In 1938, they made a trip to West Texas where they visited G.W.'s daughter, Alice, and some of Elbert's children. In November while visiting his daughter Carmen Lester and her family near Kermit, Texas, George W. Cooper had a heart attack and died. He was taken to Princeton, Louisiana and buried in the Fillmore Cemetery next to his son, George W. Cooper, Jr. who had died a few years earlier.
Willie Cooper lived until July 1962. She was also buried in Fillmore Cemetery, Bossier Parish, LA.
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