Biography of Hon. Edward Cooper HON. EDWARD COOPER, who represented the Fifth West Virginia District in Congress throughout the period of the World war, is a lawyer by training and early profession, but for over twenty years has devoted his time and ener- gies to the business of coal operator, and is one of the best known in the Pocahontas field in Mercer County. His home is in the Town of Bramwell, located on the branch of the Norfolk & Western Railroad, near Bluestone Junction. Mr. Cooper was born February 26, 1873, at Treverton, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, son of John and Maria (Padbury) Cooper. His parents were both born in England, and immediately after their marriage came to the United States, about 1863, during the Civil war times, and lived for a number of years in Pennsylvania. John Cooper had been foreman in coal mines in England, and he resumed the same work in this country. He was born in 1838. He was a regular miner in Pennsylvania, but was soon promoted to foreman. In 1872 he removed to West Virginia and began opening mines in the New River coal fields along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, first at Quine- mont and later at Cooper, near Bramwell. Here he devel- oped the first Pocahontas coal mines in West Virginia, and the first Pocahontas coal shipped from a West Virginia operation was mined and shipped by John Cooper. He was one of the successful coal operators of his time, and was also president of the Bank of Bramwell when he died in 1898. He was active in the cause of the republican party as a layman, and was one of the first masters of the Ma- sonic Lodge at Bramwell and had attained the thirty-third supreme honorary, degree in Scottish Rite Masonry. Edward Cooper was the second son in a family of six children, and has spent practically all his life in Mercer County. He attended a private school at Pocahontas, Vir- ginia, for three years, and then entered Washington and Lee University, where he took three years in the academic course and spent two years in the law department, gradu- ating in law in 1893. Mr. Cooper actively practiced at Bramwell for two or three years, but in 1898, at the death of his father, gave up his profession and took charge, along with his brother, Thomas H. Cooper, now deceased, of the coal properties at Cooper. His interests as an operator have become widely extended, and he has been a director in some of the most prominent mining corporations in the Pocahontas field, including Mill Creek, Coaldale, McDowell, Crystal, the Pocahontas Consolidated Company and the Flat Top Fuel Company. Mr. Cooper for a number of years has been a leader in the republican party in his section of the state. He was a delegate to the Chicago National Convention in 1912, where he supported the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt. In 1914 he was elected a member of the Sixty-fourth Congress, and re-elected in 1918. As a business man of wide experience, a successful coal operator, he was able to do a great deal of valuable work for the Government while in Congress, and during the period of the war. On October 5, 1895, Mr. Cooper married Frances Doug- lass Smith, of Lexington, Virginia, daughter of James R. and Fannie (Douglass) Smith. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper have two children, Edward, Jr., born October 19, 1897, and Frances Douglass, born October 5, 1902. Edward, Jr., vol- unteered in the Marine Corps at the declaration of war against Germany, and having been trained in the Culver Military Academy of Indiana he was at once made a drill sergeant, and was assigned to duty throughout the war period at Paris Island, South Carolina. Mr. Cooper and family are Presbyterians. He is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, a member of the Elks and the Moose, and belongs to the Shenandoah Club of Roanoke, Virginia, the Bluefield Country Club, Mercer County Country Club and the Falls Mills Hunting and Fishing Club, also the Pinechest Shooting Club of Thomasville, North Carolina. Mr. Cooper was for eight years a member of the town council of Bramwell, a posi- tion he now occupies. From The History of West Virginia, Old and New, page 41 Submitted by Valerie F. Crook **************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Files may be printed or copied for personal use only. ****************************************************************