which was
not at the time consulted or considered. For Mrs. Cooper brought with
her the baby boy of the household, thirteen months old, whose whole
life, because of this change of residence, was cast in a new mould. This
child was called James, but in later years he adopted also his mother's
family name, so that he honored both father and mother in the fame which
he gave to the name of James Fenimore Cooper. All his first impressions,
he said long afterward, were obtained in the Otsego region. It is to be
doubted whether Fenimore Cooper would have gained such wide celebrity as
a novelist if he had not discovered the unique field of romance which
the lake and hills of Otsego began to open to his vision. Had Fenimore
Cooper remained in Burlington he might have written good novels, but not
_The Leather-Stocking Tales_, for which he is most renowned. So that
when William Cooper took up his residence in Otsego, he not only became
the founder of a town, but he brought to the town the founder of
American romance.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 56: _A Guide in the Wilderness_, a series of letters to
William Sampson, published in Dublin, 1810, reprinted by James Fenimore
Cooper, grandson of the novelist, 1897.]

[Footnote 57: The names "Cooper" and "Cooperstown" are pronounced by the
Cooper family and by natives of the village with a short _oo_, as in the
word _book_, not as in _moon_.]

[Footnote 58: Ebbal is _L'Abbe_, spelled backward. His last years were
spent near New Berlin, beside a lonely waterfall, where he had a flower
garden, and kept bees. His grave was four miles south of New Berlin,
until relatives came and removed his remains to France.]

[Footnote 59: The account of this incident is quoted from Fenimore
Cooper's _Chronicles of Cooperstown_.]

[Footnote 60: In his _Chronicles of Cooperstown_, (1838), Fenimore
Cooper says, "The house standing at the southeast corner of Second and
Water streets, [now called Main and River street], and which for the
last forty years has belonged to the Ernst family, was erected this
summer [1790] by Mr. Benjamin Griffin. It is now the second oldest house
in the village." Cooper had already referred to the house of Israel
Guild, erected in 1788, as the oldest house standing in the village (in
1838). Guild's house was burned in the fire of 1862, and therefore the
house erected by Griffin has been, ever since that time, the oldest
house. By some inadvertence, Cooper incorrectly designa