HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      229

asked to describe his outfit of furniture he replied: “Our table was a slab
hewn out of a poplar log, our seating accommodations two stools, hewn
out of blocks, with legs driven into them; and our only bedstead, sticks
driven into one of the logs of the cabin, with supports under the inner
ends resting upon the puncheon floor, with thongs of slippery-elm bark
stretched from one end piece to the other, then crossed, after the manner
of the later bed-cord.”
    He entered politics at the early age of - eighteen years and was an
active participant in the councils and contests of his party from the time
of his majority up to the time of the Civil war. Having the confidence of
his fellow-citizens and the native ability to maintain himself in the repre-
sentative and public capacity, he was frequently honored with positions
of trust and responsibility. He was several times elected a member of
the board of township trustees and also as township clerk under the
former civic system of the state. At a time prior to the organization of
Lewis township, when Harrison comprised the whole territory of the
south end of the county, under an order for the opening of the Green-
castle-Carlisle road, by the way of Bowling Green, Middlebury, and New
Brunswick, he was commissioned to supervise the work for that section
lying within and across Harrison township, a distance of thirteen miles.
In this territory there were seventy-nine road-hands, all of whom were
called out, to work two days every week for the months of June, July,
August and September.
    In 1844 his party placed him in nomination for the office of county
assessor, when, at the general election following, he was defeated by a
very small majority. The succeeding year, 1845, he was placed on the
county ticket for sheriff, and elected. During his term of two years’
service he did not move to the county-seat, the family remaining on the
farm. At that time there were but four houses on the road between
Bowling Green and Middlebury. The amount of business then transacted
in our county offices was no index to what it is now. Sheriff Cooprider
carried his execution docket with him at all times, either in his hat or in
his pocket, which he made with his own hands, consisting of several
sheets of foolscap paper folded and sewed with needle and thread. Nor
did he have any use for a turnkey, as not a single prisoner was incarcer-
ated in the county jail during his term of service. At the expiration of
the two years he declined a re-election and returned to the farm.
    In 1860, at just fifty years of age, he was nominated and elected rep-
resentative to the state legislature, by a large majority, serving with dis-
tinction as a vigilant, working member of that body, at both the regular
and extra sessions of 1861, and he was the last surviving member of the
memorable special session of June of that year, called by Governor Mor-
ton to meet the extraordinary contingency of providing the sinews of war
in the state capacity. He was not only the oldest, but the only survivor
of that assembly who had then passed the half-century mark.
    In the days of traffic relations with the southern markets by means
of flatboat navigation, Mr. Cooprider made several trips to New Orleans;
and in 1849 made an overland trip to Cincinnati to buy the necessary
machinery and fixtures for an ox-power mill, for both sawing and grind-
ing, which he erected and operated several years, in the early fifties, at
Middlebury, on a site very near the present residence of Theodore Rob-
inson. Subsequently, the parts of this mill which could be utilized in
reconstruction were removed to New Brunswick, where a water-power