Wayne County, NC - Heritage Series

Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be 
reproduced without permission. 
Transcribed by Barbara Kawamoto.

                     The Reverend Fleet Cooper, Sr.

"Our Heritage"
By Claude Moore

   The Rev. Fleet Cooper, Sr., (1722-1795) was a pioneer Baptist minister in
Sampson and Duplin Counties and was a prominent political figure during the 
American Revolution.  According to a reliable genealogist, the Coopers were 
descended from at least four of the Barons who signed the Magna Carta and 
Fleet Cooper was descended from a brother of Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of
Shaftsbury), who was one of the Lords Proprietors who were granted the 
Carolinas in 1663 by Charles II.

  The first Cooper to come to America was James Cooper, a son of George 
Ashley Cooper.  He came from Stratford on the Avon and landed in Philadelphia
in 1682.  James Cooper was a member of the Society of Friends.  He married 
and had two daughters and four sons:  Isaac, Samuel, William and Benjamin.

   Benjamin Cooper (1701-1776) was married in 1720 to Elizabeth Kelly and in
1725 he moved to Isle of Wight County, Virginia, and then to Loudon County, 
Virginia.  They had several children among who was Fleet Cooper, the subject 
of this article.

   Fleet Cooper was born in 1722 in Philadelphia and spent his youth in 
Virginia.  We know nothing about his early education but he was married in 
1747 to Margaret Coore of Loudon County, Virginia, whose father, Thomas 
Coore, later move to Northampton County, N.C.

   He moved first to Dobbs County, and in 1764, he received a grant of land 
on Coharie Swamp in Sampson County.  Later he received grants for more than 
a 1,000 acres of land.  This was located at Concord, six miles west of 
Clinton on Highway 24.  After the Coopers arrived in what is now Sampson 
County, they were members of Coharie Baptist (Rowan) Church, which was 
founded near Clinton in 1749.  We do not know when he became a minister, but
he was pastor of the Coharie Baptist Church from 1785 to 1787.

   At the beginning of the American Revolution Fleet Cooper, Sr. signed the 
"Oath of Allegiance and Abjuration" (1777).  This qualified descendants for 
memberships in the Daughters of the American Revolution or Sons of the 
American Revolution.  In 1784, when Sampson County was established, Fleet 
Cooper, Sr., was one of the 12 justices appointed to the Court of Pleas and 
Quarterly Sessions.

   The Coopers had the following children:  John; Fleet, Jr.; William; Coore;
Elizabeth; Grace; and Mary.  Fleet Cooper, Jr., (1750-1828) was also a 
pioneer Baptist minister.  He married Sarah Scott in 1777 and had the 
following children:  Mrs. Elizabeth Pope (1779-1848); Wilson (1780-1857); 
John (1782-1832); Jacob (1783-1826); Daniel (1785-1851); Mrs. Nancy
Blackburn (1793-1878); Mrs. Penelope Howard (1797-1881); Mrs. Dicey Howard 
(1798-1879); Mrs. Rhoda Bennett (1802-1862); Mrs. Sarah Porter; and Mrs. 
Mary Butler Sessoms.  Grace Cooper married Lewis Holmes, a brother of 
Governor Gabriel Holmes and moved south.  Elizabeth Cooper married a Mr. 
Wiggins.  Mary Cooper married a Mr. Peterson.

   Many of the descendants of Fleet Cooper had been doctors, lawyers, and 
teachers and have been political leaders.  The descendants are scattered all
over the United States.  They hold an annual family reunion in Salemburg, 
N.C.

   Sources of Information:  Mary John Parker and Mamie Chambers Sawyer.   

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