Our earliest known Cooper was Jessie James Cooper. He was born in 1819 in Maysville, Mason County, Kentucky. At some time his family moved to Tennessee and then by 1840 to Fort Madison, Lee County, Iowa. There he married Mary French and had three children.

     After her death he married Lavinia Ann Collier in 1851. Jessie and Lavinia had six children. Jessie's occupation was a cooper, or a maker of barrels.

     At the war's end, Jessie returned to Iowa from Texas by train on the Burlington Railroad. He liked the land he saw north of Fort Worth and decided some time he would return to live there.

     Jessie and his family left Iowa about 1868 with several pure-blooded Morgan horses. At first the family lived in Dallas, soon moved to Wise County on the waters of the western fork of the Trinity River about two miles northeast of Paradise.

     Mary Elizabeth Cooper, Jessie's daughter said this was a beautiful place just covered with spring wild flowers of every color.

     The Cooper family went to work clearing land and building a two room log house. Jessie continued making barrels and casks, which were a necessity in every home for hauling and storing water and food.

     Jessie Cooper died in 1887 from pneumonia, complicated by some trouble of the urinary apparatus, albuminism, probably Bright's disease.

     Lavina became an invalid and lived with Fred and Mary Elizabeth Harms, her son-in-law and daughter. Her granddaughter Jimmie Gibson remembers Lavina making her fill and start her clay pipe smoking for her. When she would not do this to suit her, she would give her a backhand.

     Jessie and Lavina Cooper are buried on the south central side of Paradise Cemetery. To view the Paradise Cemetery website, click here.