Thomas Cooper (d. by 13 February 1796), member of the Convention of 1788, was born probably in the 1730s or early in the 1740s, possibly in North Carolina. Poorly documented family histories suggest that he may have been the son of Benjamin Cooper and Elizabeth Kelly Cooper, natives of Pennsylvania who moved to Virginia in the 1720s and later to Kentucky. It is more likely that he was one of a trio of men who bought and sold land between 1765 and 1774 in the western part of Halifax County, which became Pittsylvania County in 1767 and Henry County a decade later. The others were Joseph Cooper and Thomas Cooper Sr., the latter of whom was identified in some documents as a resident of Virginia and in others recorded at different times as a resident of North Carolina. One of them may have been the father of the man who in the record of those property transfers was called Thomas Cooper Jr.
Cooper married Sarah Anthony, possibly on 6 February 1762. They had five daughters and at least four sons. During the mid-1770s Cooper acquired 1,163 acres of land near Beaver Creek in Henry County, where Cooper's Creek and Cooper's mill were then recognized landmarks and where the two Thomas Coopers had owned land previously. Another man of the same name also lived in Henry County and was a soldier during part of the Revolutionary War. His relationship to Cooper is not documented, but his presence and army career further confused the family history and led to incorrect assertions that Cooper was an army officer during the American Revolution. Neither Cooper nor his namesake son, who was probably too young to participate in the war, served in the army, and it is not certain that either ever became an officer in the county militia. The county court appointed Cooper an overseer of the poor in 1783, and five years later he became a justice of the peace. A prosperous but not a wealthy man, he paid taxes on eight enslaved workers in 1782 and owned seven horses and thirty-one cattle in that year. During that decade he nearly doubled his landholdings.
In 1787 Cooper was a candidate for one of the two seats in the House of Delegates representing Henry County. The election was held at the courthouse on 9 April 1787 and irregularly held open for a time on the following day. When the sheriff finally closed the poll, John Marr had 223 votes, Abraham Penn 220, and Thomas Cooper 217, but the eligibility of more than 40 voters was disputed. At the assembly session that autumn, Penn requested that a committee investigate, and on 26 October 1787 the House declared that Cooper had been legally elected and should be seated in place of Penn. The following day the Speaker appointed "Mr. Cowper" to the Committee of Claims. Reelected in each of the succeeding three years, Cooper received no appointment to a standing committee in 1788 or 1789, but in 1790 he was a member of the Committees of Claims, of Propositions and Grievances, and for Religion.
In March 1788 Cooper was one of two men elected to represent Henry County in the convention called for June to consider the proposed constitution of the United States. He did not speak during the debates and left only his roll-call record as evidence of his opinions. Cooper voted on 25 June to require amendment of the Constitution before ratification, and after that motion failed he voted against ratification. He supported a proposal to reduce the taxing power of Congress. His record matched that of nearly every other delegate from the southern Piedmont and was consistent also with that of all the delegates from the neighboring North Carolina counties at the first ratification convention held in that state the following month.
In 1790 and 1791 Cooper sold more than 1,600 acres of his Henry County property, including the mill. He purchased at least two tracts containing a total of 575 acres of land and possibly another with 287½ acres in the portion of Greene County, Georgia, that in 1793 became Hancock County, near where one or more of his sons and members of his wife's family had already settled. Cooper moved there probably in 1791, acquired an additional 1,130 acres, and in 1793 sold the remaining 656 acres of his Virginia holdings. Thomas Cooper died in Hancock County, Georgia, on an unrecorded date before 13 February 1796, when his will was proved in the Hancock County Court. He was buried probably on his land in that county.
Sources Consulted:
Inaccurate and internally inconsistent family history in Murphy Rowe Cooper, The Cooper Family History and Genealogy, 1681–1931 (1931), 3–5, 8–9, 89–90, 98–100; undocumented birth year of 1733 in Mark Cooper Pope III and J. Donald McKee, Mark Anthony Cooper, the Iron Man of Georgia: A Biography (2000), 2–3, 6–7; marriage date in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 9 (1901–1902): 220, 328–331, citing family Bible records; identity of wife apparently verified in Henry Co. Will Book, 1:120–121; numerous references in deed books of Pittsylvania Co. (1767–1774), Henry Co. (1777–1793), and Greene Co., Ga. (1791–1793); Land Tax Returns, Henry Co. (1782–1791) and Personal Property Tax Returns, Henry Co. (1782–1790), both Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, Library of Virginia (LVA); 1787 election poll recorded on six unnumbered pages at back of Henry Co. Deed Book, vol. 3; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), Oct. 1787 sess., 11–14 (quotation on 14); John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993), 10:1539, 1541, 1557, 1565; brief credit report (ca. 1800–1803) in Public Record Office, London, T 79/87, 33; will, estate inventory, and accounts in Hancock Co., Ga., Miscellaneous Estate Records, A:82–84, and Book AA:40–41, 105–108.