By 1641, Thomas was married (to Sarah Slye) and he was settled in Springfield in 1642, where his youngest eight children's births were recorded. (It is unclear where his eldest child was born, but possibly in Connecticut where he resided briefly before moving to Springfield.) Thomas worked as a carpenter (among other things) in Springfield and he was contracted to build the meetinghouse in 1644.
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| View of Springfield from the Connecticut River by Alvan Fisher (Brooklyn Museum) |
His nine children were Sarah, Timothy, Thomas, Elizabeth, Mary, John (died at age 2), a stillborn daughter, Rebecca, and John (killed by Indians in September 1677 in Hatfield).
Thomas was an Ensign in the Springfield company in 1657. (Remember at this time, all towns had militias in order to protect their communities). He became Lieutenant in 1667. He served in many capacities in Springfield, including serving as one of the first members of their Board of Selectmen in various (not all) years from 1644 through 1674. He served as Clerk of the Writs from 1662 until his death in 1675, suggesting a more than typical education. In 1662 he was also elected as Constable.
Lt. Thomas Cooper was one of three men killed on October 5, 1675, when 45 of Springfield's 60 houses, the grist mills, and saw mills were burned to the ground by members of the Agawam tribe in what became known as the Siege of Springfield during King Philips War, considered one of the bloodiest wars, per capita, in American history.
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| A group of Indians attacking a log-cabin, King Philip's War, 1675, hand-colored woodcut from the 19th century. |
After this burning of Springfield, many of the colonists considered abandoning Springfield (but it was not abandoned and is now the third most populous city in Massachusetts).
I was thinking of this branch of my family because I just finished reading the most recently available issue of the NEHG Register, which includes an article about the Slye family. (Clifford L. Stott, "The Slye Family of Lapworth, Warwickshire: Ancestors of Capt. Robert Slye of St. Mary's County, Maryland, and Sarah (Slye) Cooper, Wife of Lt. Thomas Cooper of Springfield, Massachusetts," The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 177 (Fall 2023): 333-343).
The title mentions Lt. Thomas Cooper of Springfield, my 8th great-grandfather, but mostly focused on his wife's relatives. However, references included an earlier article in the American Genealogist (George Ely Russell, CG "Slye-Cooper-Russell Connections," The American Genealogist 57 (April 1981): 92-94), as well as Hale, House, and related families: mainly of the Connecticut River Valley by Donald Lines Jacobus (Connecticut Historical Society, 1952), which I had looked at many years ago. Thomas Cooper is also in the Great Migration Begins series C-F (pp. 205-212) from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. It is these latter sources that provide much of the information for this blog post.
I descend from Lt. Thomas Cooper and his wife Sarah Slye as follows:
This week's theme is War.
P.S. Today is my 13th Blogiversary - I started this blog on April 22, 2011.
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