k of Betsey Wallby, who "came to work on March 20, 1815,
at one dollar a week":

March 20, 1816--By one year's services, faithfully and orderly
performed--free from Yankee dignity, and ideas of
Liberty--which is insolence only. $52.00.

On New Year's day, 1818, death came to Isaac Cooper at Edgewater, and he
was laid at rest in Christ churchyard with the humblest pioneers of the
hamlet. Only for a little more than four years had he enjoyed the home
which he established at Edgewater.

In Isaac Cooper's diary, by another hand, these words were added:

September, 1823--Sold our house. Necessity compelled us.

Shortly before the house was vacated by the family of Isaac Cooper, the
garden of Edgewater was the scene of a pretty romance. Isaac Cooper's
second daughter, Elizabeth Fenimore, was a child of rare beauty, and as
she began to grow toward womanhood became renowned for wit and
loveliness. Strictly guarded by the conventional proprieties, Elizabeth
made glorious excursions into the realm of fancy, where errant knights
are ever in search of fair ladies to deliver them from castle dungeons.
Edgewater, with the freedom of its garden, was a pleasant sort of
prison, but Elizabeth was not less gratified when the knight of her
dreams actually appeared in the person of a young college student who
was spending his summer vacation in Cooperstown--Samuel Wootton Beall, a
native of Maryland. Summer evenings in Edgewater garden passed quickly
away, and there came a night of farewell, for on the next day young
Beall must return to his college, and to long months of Greek, Latin,
and mathematics. On that night the young man brought a Methodist
minister into the garden with him. There was a mysterious signal.
Elizabeth Fenimore Cooper glided out of the house, and joined the two in
darkness. They stood beneath the locust tree which rose just east of the
front steps, while in low voices the young lovers took their vows, and
the parson pronounced them man and wife. The bride immediately crept
back into the house, thrilling with her secret, while the bridegroom
went his way, and on the next day was gone.

Nothing was said of the wedding until Samuel Beall was graduated from
college, and returned to Cooperstown to claim his wife. Beyond the
extreme youth of the couple, there was really no objection to the match.
Mrs. Cooper was astonished at the announcement, but gave her blessing to
the union. Only one condition s