Thomas Cooper, 1759-1841, Papers, University of Pennsylvania Archives

University Archives and Records Center
University of Pennsylvania

Thomas Cooper, 1759 - 1841,
Papers

UPT 50 C778

.3 Cubic ft.

Access is granted in accordance with the Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

Thomas Cooper was born in London in 1759. Cooper matriculated at Oxford University, where he studied science, medicine, and law. Settling in Manchester as a member of a calico-printing firm, he began experimenting with industrial bleaching. He also became well-known as a lawyer of radical political sentiments, traveling to France during the Revolution as an observer and then attracting the oratorical ire of Edmund Burke in the House of Commons.

Failing in business after his return to Great Britain, he then immigrated to the United States and settled in Pennsylvania. After criticizing President Adams, Cooper was fined and imprisoned under the Sedition Act. After the political defeat of the Federalists in Pennsylvania in the first years of the nineteenth century, Cooper was rewarded with a judgeship in northern Pennsylvania, where he settled the Pennamite land dispute between Pennsylvania and Connecticut. He was later removed from office for "injudicious conduct."

Cooper then turned to chemistry, this time as an educator. In 1811, he became a professor of chemistry at Carlisle (later Dickinson) College. Four years later he came to the University of Pennsylvania where he taught chemistry and mineralogy and advocated for the close connection between chemistry and medicine. Cooper then headed south in 1819 to teach at the newly formed College of Virginia, but when the opening of this institution was delayed, he instead took a position as professor of chemistry at South Carolina College. He served as president of this college from 1820 to 1833, and then became a popular political figure in South Carolina in the years before his death in 1841.

For more details of Cooper's life, consult our longer, illustrated biography.

INVENTORY

This small collection consists of unprocessed biographical materials transferred from the Edgar Fahs Smith Papers in February, 1978.

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