During the last decade of Peter Cooper's life, the writer of this biographical sketch enjoyed some degree of intimacy with him, as professional adviser and traveling companion, and also, incidentally, as consulting engineer of the firm of Cooper and Hewitt, and manager of a department in the Cooper Union. This circumstance, together with the preference kindly expressed by Mr. Cooper's family, doubtless influenced the selection of the writer for the honorable task of preparing this book,—a task w

Obadiah Cooper , who, with his two brothers, came from England to the colony of New York about 1662, belonged, as we may infer with confidence, to that sturdy class of republican yeomanry which found the restored reign of the Stuarts intolerable. He settled at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson; and his son Obadiah—whom tradition declares to have been the fourth white man child born in what is now Dutchess County—was the great-grandfather of Peter Cooper. In 1720 an Obadiah of the next generation followed,

At a meeting of friends, gathered February 12, 1882, to celebrate his ninety-first birthday anniversary, Mr. Cooper, after expressing his thanks for their congratulatory good wishes, and observing that in his case "length of days had not yet resulted in weariness of spirit," added this review of his life:— "Looking back, I can see that my career has been divided into three eras. During the first thirty years I was engaged in getting a start in life; during the second thirty years I was occupied

At the end of his apprenticeship, his employer offered to set him up in business as a coach-builder, lending him the necessary capital. Many years later, Mr. Cooper told the story thus:— "I was about to accept his generous offer, when an incident occurred which changed my decision. Mr. Woodward had just completed one of the finest coaches ever built in New York, for a gentleman who was supposed to be one of the richest men in the city. But a day or two before the coach was to be delivered the ge

The inventions projected, though in many instances not perfected or successfully introduced, by Mr. Cooper constitute a long list and cover a wide field. A few of them may be mentioned here, in addition to those to which allusion has been made already. It will be seen that even those which failed of commercial success generally contained the germs of future mechanical progress, and bore witness to the extraordinary vigor and versatility of his genius. When the Erie Canal was approaching completi

In the specification of the patent secured in 1828 by Mr. Cooper for an improved steam engine, he took pains to declare the suitability of his invention as a motor for "land carriages." No doubt he had heard of Stephenson's "Rocket," if not of the engine built by Blenkinsop in 1813, the sight of which in operation caused Stephenson to resolve that he would "make a better." The famous competitive trial of the Rocket, the Novelty, the Sanspareil, and the Perseverance, on a two-mile section of the

Peter Cooper's acquaintance with the affairs of New York city ranged from the time when, as a child, he was taken by his mother to see the last remaining fragments of the stockade erected by the early inhabitants for protection against the Indians, to the full metropolitan glory of the decade of his death. This wonderful municipal history is too commonly regarded from a special standpoint, as if it were but the record of a continually renewed and often unsuccessful struggle against corrupt and i

In many respects the industrial conditions under which Peter Cooper began his career had been revolutionized before he finished it. The apprentice system has well-nigh passed away; and the old freedom with which an intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young man could turn from one occupation to another, seeking that road which offered greatest promise of preferment, is greatly hampered by the modern regime of "organized labor," which, whatever its advantages, presents its own peculiar perils

Peter Cooper's prominent activity in national politics belongs to two periods,—that of the war for the Union, and that of the subsequent controversies over questions of financial policy. As has been explained, he felt his life to be peculiarly identified with that of the nation born with him; and the idea that this nation should be destroyed in the midst of its triumphant progress was profoundly abhorrent to him. Like many other patriots, he was ready to save the Union by a compromise, if that w

In 1874, at the age of eighty-three, Mr. Cooper said at a reception given in his honor:— "When I was born, New York contained 27,000 inhabitants. The upper limits of the city were at Chambers Street. Not a single free school, either by day or night, existed. General Washington had just entered upon his first term as President of the United States, the whole annual expenditures of which did not exceed $2,500,000, being about sixty cents per head of the population. Not a single steam engine had ye