This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Cooper, Hardin, Fremont, Knox Brothers Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1607 Message Board Post: During her retirement, Mabel Bridges (4/6/1891 - 4/18/1976), using a card file, gathered notes on the earliest of the pioneers in Fremont county. I'm copying the following from Mabel's notes: 1.--1836: Settled in the spring of 1836 three or four miles southwest of Sidney under the edge of the bluff on the farm now owned by Knox brothers.--Lingenfelter, page 5. (N.B.: I am confident that Cooper did not settle along the Missouri river until 1839. At first, he went to near present day Council Bluffs, Iowa, but soon moved to the location in Nishnabotna Country, as described by Lingenfelter.--W.F.) 2.--1839: Appointed sub-agent at the Council Bluffs Indian sub-agency on April 4, 1839; salary $750 per year.--"List of Persons in the Service of the Indian Department", 1839, Senate Documents, 26th Congress, First Session.) 3.--1841: Removed in 1841.--Executive Documents of the 27th Congress, 2nd Session, volume 2. 4.--1842: Major Stephen Cooper, native of Cooper's Fort in Howard County, Missouri, settled on a farm 4 miles southwest of the present site of Sidney. Representative from Holt county, MO, in the Missouri legislature in 1842. Government employee connected with the Pottawattamie Agency; farmed for the Indians under government premit. First white resident of Fremont county. Sold his claim and business to Capt. Whitehead in 1843.--1881 History of Fremont County, page 509. (N.B.: Cooper was a government appointee more properly known as the sub-agent at the Council Bluffs Indian Sub-Agency. He did NOT farm for the Pottawattamies, which job was filled by John Hardin, being under the control of the sub-agent. Cooper in 1845 joined the famous John Charles Fremont in a western expedition, returned home later that year in the fall, and upon his return, immediately began preparations to emigrate to California in 1846. The presence of his wagon train at various places along the Oregon Trail was noted by any number of the 1846 journalists.-- W.F.)