t sale of a county-right, for which he received five
hundred dollars from Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, afterwards the founder
of Vassar College.

The manufacture and sale of the new shearing-machine, into which Mr.
Cooper introduced many additional improvements, was a prosperous
business, especially during the war of 1812, when domestic woolen goods
were in great demand. He married, December 18, 1813, Sarah Bedell, a
lady of Huguenot descent, who made for him a happy home during
fifty-seven years.[1] He bought a house in Hempstead, expecting to
remain there; and in the household, as in business, he gave rein to his
ardent and versatile inventive faculty. One of his domestic contrivances
rocked the cradle, fanned away the flies, and played a lullaby to the
baby. He sold the patent in Connecticut to a Yankee peddler for a horse
and wagon, and the peddler's stock, including a hurdy-gurdy. Another
invention was a machine for mowing grass, constructed on the principle
of his cloth-shearing machine.

But after the war, the domestic woolen mills were shut down, and there
was no sale for Mr. Cooper's machines. So he first turned his factory
into a furniture shop, and then, selling it for what he could get, he
moved to New York, and started in the grocery business, buying for this
purpose a long lease of the ground where the Bible House now stands,
opposite the Cooper Union on Ninth Street. Upon this ground he erected
several buildings, one of which he used as his office. The business was
profitable; but the real foundation of Mr. Cooper's wealth was laid
when, at the age of thirty-three, he purchased a glue factory, situated
where the Park Avenue Hotel now stands, and established himself as a
glue manufacturer. The business speedily acquired and held for half a
century practically the whole trade of the country in glue and
isinglass,--a monopoly fairly earned by the cheapness and excellence of
its product.

Mr. Cooper's inventions improved the quality and reduced the cost of his
product, while his energy, industry, and frugality steadily increased
his surplus cash, and enabled him, without borrowing capital, to extend
his sphere of operations. For many years, he carried on his glue
business without bookkeeper, agent, or salesman. Dawn found him at the
suburban factory (on what is now Thirty-Second Street) lighting the
fires and preparing for the day's work; at noon, he drove in his buggy
to the city, where he made his own sa