Horace F. Cooper
Horace Lafayette “H.F.” Cooper (1888-1967) was a prominent early businessman in Oneida.
Biography
Born March 20, 1888, in McCreary County, Ky., H.F. Cooper — known as Fate to friends and family — was the son of Eli Cooper (1849-1929) and Jemima Jane “Mamie” Taylor (1849-1922).
He had eight siblings: Elizabeth Shepherd (1871-1908), Barbara E. Carter (1873-1908), Rebecca Jane Stephens (1877-1945), Dr. William Sherman Cooper (1879-1963), Elmon L. Cooper (1881-1958), Vicie Newport (1884-1918), Margaret Susan “Maggie” Fetterman (1886-1912), and Florence Isabelle “Belle” Leeper (1890-1939).
Cooper married Myrtle Watters (1891-1982). They had no children.
Professional Life
Like his father before him, H.F. Cooper was business-minded. His father purchased Oneida’s first motel — a three-story structure called The Oneida House, which also housed the town’s first restaurant — from William Parrot. William Parrott was the father of Paul Parrot, who was born in the hotel and went on to become the founder of the famous Poll Parrot shoe company, manufacturing children’s shoes and sponsoring The Howdy Doody Show on NBC in the 1940s.
Eli Cooper changed the motel’s name to City Hotel, and hired Ben Hail to manage both the hotel and the restaurant.
In a 1924 autobiography, H.F. Cooper wrote that he had a steer and $37.50 in cash when he moved to Oneida with his family at the age of 13. He sold the cow for another $25, banked the $62.50 he owned, and began looking for a job.
Cooper soon hired a horse and began purchasing furs. He turned the $62.50 into $90 by selling his skins, and continued hunting and trapping until he had turned the $90 into $360.
At the age of 15, Cooper took over his father’s store in Oneida, Cooper Store. He wrote that the store was not successful and his father intended for him to watch the store for a few days until someone else could be found to manage it.
“I knew the business was ‘sick’ so I began to find out what was wrong,” he said. “I ‘doctored’ the ‘sore’ places and went along for one year. At the end of the year I took inventory, closed my books, and found that they were in perfect balance.”
Cooper’s guidance caused the store to turn a $500 profit that year. He gave $250 to his father, kept $250 for himself, and a businessman was born.
The $500 profit became a $1,000 profit the second year.
“The third year I doubled that profit and continued to do so until 1913, when I bought dad out,” he wrote, adding that he purchased his dad’s ownership of the store because he wanted to expand while his father was content to “let well enough alone.”
Despite becoming the store’s sole owner, Cooper continued to give his father half of the store’s profit until 1918.
Cooper built a two-story brick building around the original wood structure in 1915. The 80 ft. by 100 ft. structure was the largest building in Scott County, and eventually expanded to become the largest building within a radius of 100 miles of Oneida. Sales grew from $8,000 in 1904 to $140,000 in 1924, and continued to grow after that.
Cooper was a man of multiple talents. He gave haircuts for 15 cents and a shave for 10 cents when he first arrived in Oneida as a young teenager, which made him the town’s first barber. Once his store expanded, it became the town’s first department store, offering groceries, dry goods, and medicines. It was also Oneida’s first gasoline station.
Cooper sold caskets and coffins, and even began embalming the dead in 1927. Embalming procedures were carried out on the second floor of the store, before he moved the operation to the corner of Cross and Second streets. The undertaker hired by Cooper eventually started Hickman Funeral Home at the corner of U.S. Highway 27 and West 3rd Avenue. It was sold to Lee and Vernon West and became West Funeral Home, and later West-Murley Funeral Home.
Cooper also operated an ambulance service.
Over time, Cooper build three adjoining buildings. One of them was Oneida’s first theatre. He also had a warehouse.
The Cooper operation was so large that, when telephone service first came to town, the Cooper stores had a switchboard and an operator to help field and direct phone calls.
Cooper played a leading role in the foundation of First Trust & Savings Bank and was also at one time a director at First National Bank. He served as president of FTSB, today United Cumberland Bank, for the last 13 years of his life.
Coopertown, the residential and farmland development on the west side of Oneida, received its name when Cooper purchased part of the Welsh colony that was originally known as Brynffynon between Pistol Lane and Toomey Road. He began a farm, complete with lakes, chicken houses and trucks, and also financed tracts of land to small farmers. He sold his land for between $5 and $10 an acre on five-year terms to nearly 100 people, most of them first-time homebuyers. Ultimately, Cooper helped 85 chicken farmers set up farms that had capacities for between 5,000 and 10,000 chickens each.
To help the growing chicken industry he had started, Cooper eventually built the feed plant that stood on South Depot Street for many years.
Finally, Cooper was responsible for organizing the Oneida Water Company, and served as its first president. The company was purchased by the town in 1951. Cooper also helped build a light plant, installed the town’s sewer system, and formed the News Publishing Company that became known as the Bell Press, which published the Scott County News. He also played instrumental roles in the formation of Plateau Electric Cooperative and the Scott County Chamber of Commerce.
Cooper donated the land that New Haven Baptist Church was built on in the Coopertown community. He built a receipt box to resemble a church, allowing customers to write the name of their church on the store receipt and drop it inside the box. He then donated a percentage of each shopper’s purchase to their church.
Cooper and his Depot Street neighbor, Arlie Lay, were said to make waves in the Oneida business community when they broke tradition by keeping their stores open on Wednesday.
Today, Oneida’s Cooper Street is named after H.F. Cooper, as is Lafayette Street and Coopertown Road.
Not only is Cooper remembered as the man who built downtown Oneida, but he also purchased a farm owned by Frank Raynor in 1926, subdividing it into residential lots. It became Oneida’s second subdivision.
Death
Cooper died on Jan. 18, 1967, at age 78, following a year-long illness that resulted in him being hospitalized for the last three months of his life.
A funeral service was held on Jan. 20, 1967, with Rev. Philip Kazee and Rev. Roy Blevins officiating. Among the pallbearers were fellow businessmen Arlie Lay, Arnold Colditz, Herbert Jeffers, Tobe Phillips, J.J. Robbins, Roy Johnson, and Lillard Human.
His obituary said: “A considerable amount of the progress and growth now enjoyed by Scott Countians can be attributed largely to the unselfish efforts of Mr. Cooper, who gave of his time and money to make Scott County a better place to live.”
Cooper was buried at Cooper Memorial Gardens. His wife, Myrtle, was later buried beside him in 1982.