Major Thomas Cooper

I represent Major Thomas Cooper. I was born in Virginia in 1778. I served in the War of 1812 and came to Pensacola with General Andrew Jackson in 1814. In 1828, I married Harriet Parson, though she died young and I remarried, to a woman named Rosella. We had 10 children. I moved up the Escambia River to Durant’s Bluff, around present-day Molino, where I built my home and opened a grist mill and a saw mill. The Cooper Mill operated almost 30 years, until the onset of the Civil War, when it resumed operations. I died at my home on Durant’s Bluff in 1863 and am buried in the Vaughan Cemetery, also known as the old Molino Cemetery.