Histories

Horace Jackson Cooper (Written by TX000090)

My great-grandfather on my maternal side was known by the family as Harry Jackson Cooper, born 29 August 1868 in Charleston, South Carolina. He told the family his father was Henry Cooper and mother was Caroline Jackson. He worked for the railroad and met and married my great-grandmother in Fruita, Mesa County, Colorado in 1901. By 1911 they had seven children. My great-grandfather decided to leave to go to South American, through Texas, to work for the railroad. My great-grandmother would never speak of him again.

He had little to no contact with his children and no one knew what happened to him. My second cousin hired a professional genealogist to try to find out what happened to him and to find more information on his parents, but they had little success.

This was a mystery to try to solve. I found clues regarding a Horace Jackson Cooper who listed his father as Quintus Leonidas Cooper and gave his birth year as 1872 in Milam County, Texas, on passport applications.

The other similarities were that he worked for the railroad and went to Panama to work there and then other places in South America. Q. L. Cooper was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and emigrated to Texas after the Civil War with his family. No record of a Horace or Harry was found and the only male child close to Horace's age was Hugh born 1866.

A woman contacted me regarding her son being the second-great-grandson of Horace through the marriage with a woman from Panama. I recommended he do a DNA test as I had done one through Ancestry.com and uploaded it to MyHeritage.com. Well DNA does not lie, and the second-great-grandson of Horace is a DNA match to me. The mystery is I have yet to find any birth records for Horace Jackson Cooper, only passport applications and Social Security applications indicating his parents as Quintus L. Cooper and Mary McCracken. He is not in the 1880 census with them in Texas, yet he should have only been eight years old according to his passport applications. I'm still not convinced he was truly their son. I was hoping this DNA project would help to solve this mystery of who this man was.