His father owned many thousand acres
of primeval forest about this village, and so through the years of a
free boyhood the young Cooper came to love the wilderness and to know
the characters of border life. When the village school was no longer
adequate, he went to study privately in Albany and later entered Yale
College. But he was not interested in the study of books. When, as a
junior, he was expelled from college, he turned to a career in the navy.
Accordingly in the fall of 1806 he sailed on a merchant ship, the
_Sterling_, and for the next eleven months saw hard service before the
mast. Soon after this apprenticeship he received a commission as a
midshipman in the United States navy. Although it was a time of peace,
and he saw no actual fighting, he gained considerable knowledge from his
service on Lake Ontario and Lake Champlain that he put to good use
later. Shortly before his resignation in May, 1811, he had married, and
for several years thereafter he lived along in a pleasant, leisurely
fashion, part of the time in Cooperstown and part of the time in
Westchester County, until almost accidentally he broke into the writing
of his first novel. Aside from the publication of his books, Cooper's
later life was essentially uneventful. He died at Cooperstown, on
September 14, 1851.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25