James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was born in 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey. Cooper’s father, William, was the founder of a frontier settlement at the Susquehanna River in Cooperstown, New York and was also a federalist congressman during the administrations of John Adams and George Washington. Cooper’s mother, Elizabeth, was a member of a respectable Quaker family in New Jersey. In 1806 Cooper got a commission in the United States Navy. Cooper eventually resigned his commission to marry Susan Augusta De Lancey, whom he met in 1810. Cooper was once reading aloud a novel to his wife, when suddenly as he was reading he threw the book away and exclaimed that he could write a better book by himself which led him to write a tale that was eventually called