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John Colin (Collins) Cooper
COOPER, John Colin (Collins), b. 1805, arr. 24.8.1830 per Edward Lambe. Clerk, accountant & surveyor, selected 800 acres Murray district. Applied for a ferry licence at Guildford 1830. Was expecting his wife & some property in 1832 but was destitute & seeking work. Licensee of an inn at Frem. 1833. Left for S.A. 4.1840 per Minerva.
Tuckfield mentions more than one J. Cooper in his papers on early hotels and publicans, as follows:
J. C. Cooper in 1832 complained to the Colonial Secretary of lack of bread for his family. (70)
Several publicans flitted from one pub to another, sometimes remaining in a place only a year, sometimes for less. The two licence holders mentioned, Joseph Cooper and William Heard, are examples, and cause problems. Whether they had places of their own or were just lessees of existing places under another name can only be conjectured. Heard may have leased the Stirling Arms once Thomson had moved to Rottnest. Cooper may have leased Bateman's Black Swan; if so, it was under a different name, because from 1833 to 1835 or later, Joseph Cooper had a licence for a house called the Plough, and in 1833 John Cooper was charged with keeping a disorderly house. Luckily for him the charge was dismissed; without further information, it would be unfair to say more. There were a number of J. Coopers who were either John or Joseph or James and not all related; as all correspondence was handwritten, Christian names, and even surnames, were sometimes misinterpreted. (79-80)
References and Links
Tuckfield, Trevor 1971, 1975, 'Early colonial inns and taverns', Early Days: Journal and proceeedings of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, Part 1, 7, 3: 65-82; Part 2, 7, 7: 98-106.
See also Joseph Cooper, for the Yunderup milling family.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 27 August, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/cooperjohncolin.html (it was last updated on 25 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.