Susan Fenimore Cooper

Susan Fenimore Cooper in 1850s

Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper (April 17, 1813 - December 31, 1894) was an American writer and amateur naturalist. She was born in Scarsdale, New York, the daughter of the well known novelist James Fenimore Cooper. She was his second child, and the eldest to survive her youth. During the later years of her father's life, she became his secretary and amanuensis, and but for her father's prohibition would naturally have become his biographer.

In 1873, she founded an orphanage in Cooperstown, and under her superintendence it became in a few years a prosperous charitable institution. It was begun in a modest house in a small way with five pupils; in 1900 the building, which was erected in 1883, sheltered ninety boys and girls. The orphans were taken when quite young, were fed, clothed, and given a basic education, and when old enough positions were found for them in “good Christian families.” Some of them before leaving were taught to earn their own living. In furtherance of the work to which she consecrated her later years, and which she termed her “life work,” during 1886 she established The Friendly Society. Every woman on becoming a member of the Society chooses one of the girls in the orphanage and makes her the object of her special care and solicitude.

Her home was built mainly with bricks and materials from the ruins of Otsego Hall, where her parents and grandparents lived. She died in Cooperstown, New York.

Works

• Elinor Wyllys, a novel (1846)
• Rural Hours, her most famous book, a nature diary of Cooperstown, New York (New York, 1850)
• The Journal of a Naturalist, an English book edited and annotated by her (1853)
• Rhyme and Reason of Country Life (1885)
• Mt. Vernon to the Children of America (1859)

References

•  "Cooper, James Fenimore". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.  The note about her being the eldest of the children to survive her youth is from the 1889 edition.

External links

• Essays by Susan Fenimore Cooper at Quotidiana.org
• Susan Fenimore Cooper page from James Fenimore Cooper Society Website
• Works by Susan Fenimore Cooper at Project Gutenberg