Hi List, I am still looking for the parents of Jesse Cooper. The first mention of him is in 1802 in a newspaper in Cincinnati stating that he had a letter waiting for him at the post office. It was addressed to "Jesse Cooper of Columbia" . Columbia was a small town in Hamilton County, Ohio near Cincinnati. The next mention of him is in 1815 when he is listed in the probate records as being the appraiser (this is not the correct legal term but that's what he did) of the estate of George Cooper. I don't know if George was a relative of Jesse's or not. In 1825 (mid 20s anyway) Jesse petitions the court to have his land divided. I suppose that he wanted to sell some of it. Jesse is listed with his wife Dorcas in the Hamilton County censuses of 1820 and 1830. Sometime in the 1830s he and his family moved to Clermont County. The last mention of him comes in Nov. 1848 when he's mentioned in a diary of a woman who lived in Madisonville, another small town near Cincinnati. She states that he fell into the fly wheel at Kugler's distillery and was injured. He probably died from that since he is not listed in the 1850 census of Clermont County. Jesse would have been born around the mid 1780s. He had 3 sons; William (my ancestor), Jared and Samuel. My father always said he thought that we were descended from the same Coopers as Daniel C. Cooper who laid out the city of Dayton, Ohio in 1796. However, I have no proof whatsoever. Still I wonder about it whenever I see Daniel's statue in Cooper Park in Dayton. Does any of this sound familiar? Thanks! Sharon Schwartz