Stirpes, Volume 40, Number 2, June 2000 Page: 33
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The Phillips, Cooper & bandridge Families
A Genealogical History by Joseph Phillips Cooper, 1932Jonathan Phillips emigrated from
Scotland to America in the 1700's and settled
in South Carolina. His son, John, who was my
great-grandfather, served in the Revolutionary
War. My grandfather, Stacy Cooper,
served in the early Indian Wars in South
Carolina some years later.
My father, John Phillips (better known as
Jack) was born in South Carolina about 1818
and died in 1848. His first wife was a Miss
Jenkins and they had one daughter, Charlotte.
He early became interested in the affairs of
the State and was appointed to one of the
military departments. He had charge of
recruiting for the military arm of the service.
About this time, 1835, his first wife died.
John Phillips had been promoted to
military commander and married Sarah Ann
Phillips (my mother), born February 26, 1823.
A year or two later the war scare with
Mexico became imminent and my father was
appointed Captain and ordered to raise a
company and get ready for service in Mexico.
This he did but was taken ill and soon died.
This was about 1848 or 1849.
My mother was left with three children
and I was the infant. My grandfather took my
mother home and cared for her for some
time. Then she married a Mr. Odell. He had a
family and they resided in Laurens Co., South
Carolina. Mother died in 1880.
About this time there was a great caravan
starting to a new country, Alabama and
Georgia. My grandfather, being wealthy in
land and Negroes, began getting ready to
move to Alabama. He did so and settled inBenton County (now Calhoun County). There
were more than thirty wagons in the group
going to this new land. There was quite a lot
of rain and high water and we were more than
two weeks on the road. It should not have
taken more than a week under ordinary
conditions. There were many rivers then, no
bridges and a few ferries. Some days we
would come to a river and have to stay two or
three days to let the waters subside. It was
on this trip about the year 1853, that I saw
my first RR train at Altoona Mountain,
Georgia, and strange to say, I saw the same
crossing in 1864 and recognized it.
There were about thirty Negroes making
the trip. The older ones walked all the way
and were the merriest bunch you could
imagine. My grandfather, John Phillips, had
sold his holdings in South Carolina except his
Negroes and two of his sons had preceded
him and contracted for land so we knew where
to go. He had contracted for something like
800 acres. It had a water mill and a large
residence two miles from Alexandria. There
was also a large peach orchard on the place.
This orchard was quite an asset. It had
heretofore been a liability as there was no
such thing as a still for making brandy. He,
Grandfather, utilized the fruit, all right. He
began raising cotton, too, on a commercial
scale, something that had never been done
there before. His first care was to building a
still house, then a gin. I have often heard him
speak of his first crop of cotton, ten bales. A
bale was a big crop for the average farmer.33
The following narrative was written by Joseph Phillips Cooper, half-brother of my grandfather, William
Louis Odell. The original was finished October 26, 1932, when J.P. Cooper was 85 years old. He wrote this
history for his daughter, Ruby Cooper Keitt, because she, above all his children, was most interested in the
genealogy of her family. Mrs. Keitt, who resides in Hubbard, Texas, graciously submitted to me the original
from which this manuscript is taken. Except for a few changes in punctuation and sentence structure, this
manuscript is a replica of the original. Betty Jane Bond Bostick.STIRPES
.TINF 20nnn
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Texas State Genealogical Society. Stirpes, Volume 40, Number 2, June 2000, periodical, June 2000; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39844/m1/35/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Genealogical Society.