o the author," he wrote. "After a lapse of half a century, he is
writing this paragraph with a pain that would induce him to cancel it,
were it not still more painful to have it believed that one whom he
regarded with a reverence that surpassed the love of a brother, was
converted by him into the heroine of a work of fiction."

Although Hannah Cooper was thus excluded, by her brother's delicacy,
from the place which rumor had assigned to her among the characters of
his first Leather-Stocking tale, her name is commemorated in the actual
scene of the story, for the pine-clad summit which overlooks the village
of Cooperstown from the west is still called in her honor, "Hannah's
Hill."

The position of the grave that lies next south of Hannah Cooper's tomb
in Christ churchyard is a tribute to the reverent affection which she
inspired. It is the grave of Colonel Richard Cary, one of General
Washington's aides, and his burial in a plot otherwise exclusively
reserved for interments of the Cooper family is attributed by tradition
to Colonel Cary's fervent admiration for the piety of Hannah Cooper.
Colonel Cary at the close of the Revolutionary War settled in
Springfield, at the head of Otsego Lake. Often a visitor in Cooperstown
he became acquainted with Miss Cooper, and was inspired by a devotion to
her character entirely becoming in a man old enough to be her father,
and already blessed with a family of his own. He is described as "an
upright, well-bred and agreeable gentleman, possessed of wit and genius,
and good humor." Six years after Hannah Cooper's death Colonel Cary
suffered severe reverses of fortune, and was "put on the limits," as the
penalty of unpaid debt was then described, being an exile from his home
in Springfield, and required to remain within the village bounds of
Cooperstown. As winter drew on Colonel Cary died. His dying request was
that he might be buried near Miss Cooper's grave, "for," he said,
"nobody can more surely get to Heaven than by clinging to the skirts of
Hannah Cooper!"

At Hannah Cooper's funeral a singularly noble and picturesque character
was brought into the history of Cooperstown, for the officiating
clergyman was Father Nash, who then for the first time held service in
the village, and afterward became the first rector of Christ Church,
being for forty years the most noted apostle of religion in Otsego
county.

During the first ten years of the existence of the village, the people