2008 SEASON

Open:  May 16th

Close:  Oct 13th

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Welcome to Cooperstown, New York
The Village of Museums
(Originally Produced by the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce)

Our History

Cooperstown is chiefly known as the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and of novelist James Fenimore Cooper, author of "The Last of the Mohicans".  But it is much more than this:  The village's development over the course of 200-plus years has mirrored that of the nation-at-large.  And, due to its unique geographical location and the residency of key individuals, our village has made significant contributions to American history.  In fact, a walk through Cooperstown is like walking through a large open-air museum.

Settlement, Croghan, and Cooper's Town

Before America was settled by Europeans in the 17th century, Otsego Lake was used as a summer fishing camp by indigenous peoples, the Susquehannock and the Iroquois.  About 1612 the first white men, Dutch fur traders from Albany, laid eyes on the nine-mile long lake, which is the source for the Susquehanna River.  From that time on, Dutch and English traders and missionaries made visits to this area.  In 1684 lands along the Susquehanna River were ceded from the Iroquois to the English, but Native Americans maintained a presence in the region for another 100 years. 

During the 1700's, the British crown granted land to individuals or corporations through a patent system.  The first recorded land patent on Otsego Lake was obtained in 1740 by John J. Petrie.  The first attempt toward a permanent settlement on the site of Cooperstown was made by missionary John Christopher Hartwick in 1761, whose holdings were actually southwest of Cooperstown.  Hartwick later withdrew to the proper limits of his land.

Otsego's first major settler of record was Colonel George Croghan, who acquired 250,000 acres along Cherry Valley and Otsego Lake in 1769.  The Dublin-born Croghan came here Pennsylvania, where he faced debtor's prison, and began a farming and trading settlement, relying on American Indian and Irish laborers.  Married to a daughter of a Mohawk Chief, Croghan was admitted as a member of the Six Nations.  His daughter, Catherine, married Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea, as secretary to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Crown, Guy Johnson, and a captain in the British Army who led raids against settlements in the Mohawk Valley during the Revolution. 

Croghan, who sympathized with the colonists, lost his Otsego County lands by the time of the war and went west to Ohio.  The site of his settlement is marked bye New York State Department of Education historical marker on Main Street. 

Although no major Revolutionary War battles were fought here, expeditionary forces tramped through the region, giving Yankee citizen-soldiers their first view of Otsego Lake and lands west.  The only operation staged from Cooperstown was the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779:  In response to Iroquois raids on white settlements, General James Clinton's troops encamped on Otsego Lake and dammed the Susquehanna.  The dam was broken and the soldiers, floating downstream, met a larger force under General Sullivan, and then destroyed Iroquois settlements along the way.

Croghan's holdings were sold at auction in 1785 to William Cooper, an up-and-coming entrepreneur from Burlington, NJ.  Cooper, a wheelwright, had married into a well-to-do family and by 1782 was a successful storekeeper, speculator and leading citizen in Burlington, a major trading center.  Cooper left behind his growing family and came here in 1786 to start this village on the shores of Otsego Lake.  He offered farmers an opportunity to buy land outright and directly supervised the development of his lands instead of hiring an agent.  In so doing, Cooper attracted many settlers quickly and became a wealthy man.  To insure his village's success, Cooper encouraged the production of maple syrup and pot ash (produced from ashes created when land was cleared and trees burned) as cash crops.  He also procured supplies from the state legislature to see the settlement through its first winters.

By 1790, when Cooper moved his wife and seven children here, there were ten frame house, three barns, a store, tavern, tannery, and about 50 inhabitants.  One building from this era, the first floor of the Smithy on Pioneer Street, was built by Cooper in 1786 and exists today. 

By 1791, Otsego County had been organized, with Cooperstown as its county seat and Cooper, a staunch Federalist, as its judge.  Cooperstown grew and before the close of the century boasted several mills, a pottery, a public library and a newspaper started in 1795 by Elihu Phinney.  Phinney became an early giant in the publishing world, with his Bibles and almanacs being used by hundreds of thousands.

Judge Cooper died in 1809.  Legend has it that a political adversary struck Cooper, who served both in the state legislature and Congress, on the head from behind after a heated debate.  Although he had fathered 11 children, only two, Ann and James, attained middle-age.  Ann Cooper married George Pomeroy, a druggist.  Their home, built for them by Judge Cooper, still exists at 11 Main Street.

James Fenimore Cooper

James legally assumed his mother's maiden name and after several years at sea and as a gentleman farmer, became one of America's best known and innovative authors.  Growing up he lived in Otsego Hall, a manor his father had built for his mother that stood on a spot marked by Victor Salvatore's statue of the author in Cooper Park.  This building was razed by fire in 1853, two years after the author's death.  Nearby, the Christ Church Graveyard, you can visit the graves o the author and his family. 

Although Cooper's books are difficult for modern readers, he remains an important American author and his works live on as major motion pictures:  Cooper was the first to write about life at sea and to depict the American wilderness.  He invented the "western hero" prototype.  Two of his books about the rough-and-tumble woodsman, Natty Bumppo, are set in Otsego County:  "The Deerslayer" (1841), describes Otsego Lake at the outbreak of the French-and-Indian War.  "The Pioneers" (1823), has the growing village of Cooperstown as its settling and focuses on Judge Marmaduke Templeton, a character based on Judge Cooper.

Judge Samuel Nelson

As Judge Cooper's town became Cooperstown, the community grew and became a summer retreat for well-heeled city dwellers and served as part-time home for those who shaped the nation's destiny:  Samuel F.B. Morse, a painter and inventor of the telegraph, spent summers second-in-command for the Union during the battle of Ft. Sumter, had family connections in the area as a boy.  Judge Samuel Nelson, an associate justice for the United States Supreme Court from 1845 to 1872 lived here and built a large in-town residence at 68 Main Street, which still exists.

Nelson, a Democrat, brought the broader political issue of the Civil War to Cooperstown, when he was visited by Secretary of State William Seward and a foreign diplomatic corp.  This visit, allegedly part of a tour of the industrial Northeast, was probably made so President Lincoln could learn Nelson's opinion on the constitutionality of the Conscription Act (Nelson considered the draft constitutional).

The Story Continues with The Clark Family
(click here for more history)

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