228                         HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

    Elias C. Kilmer was a young man of good talent, close application
and strong character, of a high sense of honor, who never proved
recreant to a trust reposed in him by a friend nor by the public. After
his death Mrs. Kilmer returned to Brazil, where, on the 4th of July,
1888, she married Joseph A. Lynd, and there she continued to reside until
the time of her death. A son and a daughter of the first marriage sur-
vive, Karl Kilmer, of Harrison township, and Mrs. Hester Wilkinson,
Brazil.

    Elias Cooprider, the eldest of a family of fifteen children, and a
native of Harrison county, Indiana, was born November 23, 1810, within
sight of the Ohio river, on what was afterward known as the Colonel
Shields place, near the Brandenburg Ferry. He is a son of John and
Elizabeth (Fleshman) Cooprider, the father being a native of Pennsyl-
vania and the mother, of Virginia, and both of German descent. They
came to Harrison county in 1805. John Cooprider’s father’s name was
Peter Cooprider, and he was born on the ocean, while the family was in
passage from Germany to this country. The grandfather’s and the great-
grandfather’s name was also Peter.
    In 1822, when Elias Cooprider was twelve years old, the family came
north, locating and building a cabin on the west side of Eel river, near
what has long been popularly known as “Hooker’s Point.” They arrived
on the 6th day of March, staying until the month of August, when, becom-
ing discouraged, and alarmed over the effects of the ague, they returned
to Harrison county. After a temporary residence of two years there
they came back, in the spring of 1824, and “pitched their tent” on the
east side of the river, on what is now the Malsom place, on the north
border of the town of Middlebury. Elias was then in his fourteenth year
and great help to his parents in clearing up the ground and producing a
livelihood for the family. At the age of eighteen he joined a company of
militia organized in the south part of the county, was chosen lieutenant
and held a commission from the governor of the state, and usually was
in command of the company on muster days. When he was nineteen his
father said to him, “You are now at liberty; the world is wide; you will be
able to do more for yourself by well directed self-exertion than I can do
for you.”
    The first property he owned subject to assessment was a young horse,
and his first tax receipt was for 37 1/2 cents. To raise the money to
acquire land of his own, he produced and marketed hogs, which were
then worth about two dollars a hundred at Terre Haute. At twenty years
of age he entered a quarter section adjoining the family homestead on the
west, on which he lived from the time of his marriage to the time of his
death, a period of seventy years. This farm was within a half mile of
the original family residence.
    On the 13th day of October, 1831, he married Miss Polly Lankford,
a native of Kentucky, born in 1813. About a year before his death, in
reciting to a friend the details of his marriage, he proceeded to say: “The
young man of to-day who provides and furnishes a modern cottage home
in readiness for his bride, and having the nuptial knot tied, begins wedded
life under his own roof, if he fancy that he is entitled to the credit of
an innovation in conventionalities, needs to be called down. I lay claim
to having introduced this usage practically three score and ten years ago.
I married in the original cabin on my land and began life there.” When