Among the notables of Pekin’s pioneer past was Col. Thomas W. Cooper (1830-1914), who served as Pekin’s 22nd. mayor (1881-1884) and 26th mayor (1891-1892). Mayor Cooper’s most memorable achievement in office was the building of Pekin’s first City Hall in 1884, but he and the City Council during his first terms were also responsible for the installing of Pekin’s first sewer, first curbs and gutters, first brick sidewalks, and first street signs.
However, those were far from his only notable accomplishments during the 84 years of his life. An native of Ohio who first came to Illinois in 1844, Cooper was one of the early settlers of Morton Township, a veteran of the Mexican War (enlisting in the U.S. Army when he was only 17), and one of Pekin and Tazewell County’s most prominent men in the latter half of the 1800s. About 1871 he became co-owner of a lumber business in Washington, Illinois. Cooper served as Morton Township Supervisor 1872-1873, then was Tazewell County Treasurer 1873-1885. His brother Jesse B. Cooper (1831-1917) also served as Pekin Township Supervisor and Treasurer, and was also Overseer of the Poor for Pekin Township.
Thomas Cooper’s duties as county treasurer brought him to Pekin, and by 1887 he and his family were living in a home in Pekin at 851 S. Fifth St. The 1893 city directory lists him at 804 S. Fifth St., with a clarifying note that says the correct house number(s) was 801-817 S. Fifth St. — that appears to be the same address as the 1887 directory’s 851 S. Fifth St. His last address in Pekin city directories was in 1913, the year before his death, listed at 703 Bacon St., the same neighborhood if not the same location as in the earlier directories.
Cooper’s first mayoral terms in Pekin coincided with his stint as county treasurer. As if it were not enough for him to wear those two hats, Cooper in 1882 became chairman, and then president, of the Pekin Park private corporation which established Mineral Springs Park. That corporation was predecessor of the Pekin Park District. Then in May 1886, about two years after the end of his first mayoral term in Pekin, Cooper became a co-owner for several years of the Pekin Daily Times, a newspaper that then was aligned with the Democrat Party of which Cooper was a member throughout his adult life. Cooper also made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1904, but was defeated by the Republican candidate Joseph Verdi Graff.
As one of Pekin’s community leaders, Cooper was active in the planning and organizing of Pekin’s old Street Fairs, and in particular was president of the committee for the 1902 Street Fair where the public marriage at the Tazewell County Courthouse band stand lawn of Spanish-American war hero Pvt. Lloyd J. Oliver was one of the most popular attractions. Cooper also served on the McKinley Memorial Day Committee that oversaw Pekin’s public mourning for the death of U.S. President William McKinley who was assassinated by an anarchist in September of 1901. Cooper was also active in the local Grand Army of the Republic.
Mayor Cooper married twice, first in 1849 to Margaret Ann Strickland (1830-1884), with whom he had seven children, two of whom died in childhood or infancy. His second wife was Anna Kern Wrenn (1855-1945). Cooper and both of his wives are buried in Lakeside Cemetery in Pekin.
A biographical sketch of Mayor Cooper’s life was published on pages 74-54 of the “Atlas Map of Tazewell County,” which was printed in 1873 when Cooper was turned 43. That sketch is transcribed here:
THOMAS COOPER is one of the prominent farmers and citizens of Morton township. He was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, in 1830, where he remained until 1844, and then migrated to the state of Illinois, and remained in Tazewell county, one year, when he returned to Cincinnati, Ohio, and engaged as mate on a steamer on the Ohio river, running from Cincinnati to the city of New Orleans, and stopped at all intermediate points. In this capacity he continued until 1847. At that time the United States was at war with Mexico. Mr. Cooper was then about seventeen years old; his patriotism and love for his country were so strong that he volunteered his service to his government, and went to Mexico, and served under General Scott. He was engaged in every battle that the United States army under General Scott fought from Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico. At the time the first armistice was proclaimed, Mr. Cooper was one that detailed from the ranks, and sent into the city of Mexico for provisions for Gen. Scott’s army. This was a feat attended with great difficulty and many dangers; but without a murmur or complaint he obeyed the order, and in company with his comrades made his way into the city, and after receiving many abuses and insults, and escaping many dangers, received a bad and dangerous wound from the enemy that confined him for several months; but under a stout constitution and a brave heart he recovered, and did good and full service through the balance of the war, until its final close, when he received an honorable discharge at Vera Cruz, in February, 1848. He then returned to Cincinnati, where he remained but a short time, and then returned to Illinois, and located land on section one, Morton township, Tazewell county. Here he commenced to improve a farm, and has been extensively engaged in farming and raising stock ever since. In the spring of 1849 he was married to Miss Margaret A. Stricklin, who was born in Christian county, Kentucky, in 1830, and moved with her parents to Tazewell county, Ill., in 1835.
Wm. Cooper was the father of Thomas Cooper, and was born in Fort Washington, now known as the city of Cincinnati, in the year 1806, where he remained until 1832, when he died.Wm. Cooper, Sen., was Thomas Cooper’s grandfather, and was born in Virginia, near the city of Richmond, and served his country through the Indian war, during the reign of “Mad Anthony Wayne.”
Thomas Cooper has but limited education, but his superior natural intellect and good judgment have made him one of the popular and useful men of Morton township. He has been compelled by his many friends to accept and hold about all the offices of his township, and is supervisor at the present time. In addition to his extensive farming and stock raising, about one year ago he became engaged with Mr. Sonneman in the lumber business, in the town of Washington, where they are, perhaps, at the present time, carrying the largest and best selected stock of lumber of all kinds that can be found in any country town south of Chicago. They are selling for cash at lower prices than any other firm in the country.
Mr. Cooper is now the father of seven children; two are dead and five living; one daughter is married, and the rest are single and living at home.
A brief biographical sketch on Thomas Cooper was also included in Charles C. Chapman’s “History of Tazewell County” (1879), page 709, as follows:
Thomas Cooper, County Treasurer, and a pioneer of Tazewell Co., was born Feb. 2, 1830, in Hamilton Co., Ohio, and came to this county way back in the early days of the county’s history, in 1844, when but a lad of fourteen years. His parents, William and Mary (Beal) Cooper, were natives, the former of Virginia, and the latter of Pennsylvania. At the rather tender age of 19, Mr. Cooper, in compliance with the scriptural injunction, “took unto himself a wife,” and in 1849 was bound in the bonds of matrimony to Miss M. A. Strickland. Five children blessed the union. Mr. Cooper at the age of 16, enlisted in the Mexican War, in which he did gallant service, and fought under that brave old hero Gen. Winfield Scott. In January, 1879, he, as a delegate, accompanied the “Merchant’s and Manufacturer’s Industrial Deputation of the Northwest,” to Mexico, thereby giving him an opportunity to see that land, where thirty-three years before he had helped to vanquish that great Mexican chieftain, Santa Anna.
Mayor Cooper’s death was reported in the Decatur (Ill.) Review, 8 June 1914, page 10, as follows:
G.A.R Mexican War
Colonel Thomas Cooper, former mayor of Pekin, died at his home in Pekin Friday. He was the father of Mrs. Ellen Augustine of Decatur and she was at his bedside at the time of his death. Colonel Cooper was a veteran of the Mexican War.
