Cooper, Susan Augusta Fenimore

(Apr. 17, 1813-Dec. 31, 1894). Author and churchwoman. She was born in Heathcote Hill, Mamaroneck, New York, and privately educated. She was the daughter of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Deerslayer (1841). In 1850 she published Rural Hours, which was a very successful nature diary, and in 1890 she published William West Skiles, a Sketch of Missionary Life in Valle Crucis in Western North Carolina, 1842-1862. In 1873 Cooper founded the Orphan House of the Holy Savior in Cooperstown, New York, a village founded by her family. She is commemorated in a stained-glass window in Christ Church, Cooperstown. She died in Cooperstown.