Growing Up in Cooper Country

Shortly after the Revolution, new waves of settlers came from the Hudson Valley and New England to the hills
and woodlands of Central New York. While the adults wiled to tame the wilderness later made famous by
Cooper’s Leatherstocking, Tales, the children led busy, wonderful lives of their own.

This charming book contains extensive boyhood reminiscences from the autobiographies of two men who grew up in the Cooper Country during the frontier period—Levi Beardsley and Henry Wright. Although the two boys grew up within a few miles of each other and had similar experiences, they never knew each other. Their memoirs take on an added dimension because they viewed the world through totally different personalities.

These men tell enchanting stories of life on the New York frontier. They give us memorable descriptions of
bear hunts, clearing the forests and building log houses, cruelties and kindnesses, bees, and politics and religion.

Jones’s engaging introduction provides additional information about the two men and about Judge
William Cooper (father of James Fenimore Cooper), who opened “the West” to settlement. This territory, which was to become home to young Levi and Henry, is shown in two maps. One traces the westward route of the
Beardsleys from near the Vermont border to Richfield; the other depicts the area where the two families settled and the boys wandered and meditated during their growing years.