Cooper, Jesse (of Carrollton, IL)

Flourished: 1850 to 1860 Carrollton, IL

Jesse Cooper was a grocer and dry goods merchant in Carrollton, Illinois between at least 1850 and 1860. In 1858 Abraham Lincoln and William H. Herndon represented two of his creditors in lawsuits against him. Two years later he owned real estate valued at $2,000 and possessed personal property worth $300. Cooper married Sophia Reddish in 1851 and the pair had several children. He may have been the Jesse Cooper who was injured in a fire in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1866. At the time of the 1870 census his family was living in St. Joseph, but he was not listed as a member of the household.

U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Carrollton, Greene County, IL, 88; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Jersey County, 10 January 1851, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Montague’s Illinois and Missouri State Directory for 1854-5 (St. Louis: Wm. L. Montague, 1854), 188; For Lincoln’s legal cases involving Cooper, search Participant, “Cooper, Jesse,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition , 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), https://lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Carrollton, Greene County, IL, 215; Smith & Dumoulin, comp., Illinois State Business Directory, 1860 (Chicago: J. C. W. Bailey, [1860]), 99; Chicago Tribune (IL), 27 June 1866, 2:9; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Ward 1, St. Joseph, Buchanan County, MO, 9.