James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper had a remarkably boring, wealthy existence. His parents were shrewd and ambitious, easily acquiring money and power. Thus he was exposed early on to the finer pleasures of life.
A rich line of ancestry connects the author to the land which was the focus of his most well-known novels. William Cooper, his father, who was to become one of the most successful founders of new settlements in the colonial republic, was descended from the English Quakers who had come to West...