bany, New York, and also to his
publishers have been met in a spirit so gracious and their giving has
been so generous as to command the grateful service of the writer.

For rare values, in service and material, special credits are due to Mr.
George Pomeroy Keese, Cooperstown, N.Y.; James Fenimore Cooper, Esq.,
Albany, N.Y.; Mr. Francis Whiting Halsey, New York City; Mr. Edwin
Tenney Stiger, Watertown, Mass.; General James Grant Wilson, New York
City; Mr. Horace G. Wadlin, Librarian, Messrs. Otto Fleischner,
Assistant Librarian, O.A. Bierstadt, F.C. Blaisdell, and others, of the
Boston Public Library; Miss Alice Bailey Keese, Cooperstown, N.Y.; Mrs.
T. Henry Dewey, Paris, France; Mrs. Edward Emerson Waters, New York
City; and Miss Mary C. Sheridan, Boston, Mass.

Mary E. Phillips.

INTRODUCTION

A life of Cooper, written with some particular reference to the
picturesque village among the Otsego hills, where he so long lived and
in whose soil he, for some sixty years or more, has slept, has long been
needed. That such a book should have become a labor of love in the hands
of Miss Phillips is not more interesting than it is fortunate that the
task should have been accomplished so conspicuously well. Miss Phillips
has borne testimony to the resourcefulness and rare devotion with which
the late Mr. Keese assisted her in researches extending over many years.
None knew so well as he the personal side of Cooper's whole life story;
none so assiduously and so lovingly, during a long life spent in
Cooperstown, gathered and tried to preserve in their integrity every
significant and interesting detail of it.

The turning point in Cooper's life was reached when he went to
Cooperstown, although he was little more than a child in arms. Most
curious is it that his going should have resulted from the foreclosure
of a mortgage. This mortgage had been given in the late Colonial period
by George Croghan, and covered a vast tract of native forest lands in
Otsego. In these lands, through the foreclosure, Cooper's father, soon
after the Revolution, acquired a large interest, which led him to
abandon his home of ease and refinement in Burlington, New Jersey, and
found a new, and, as it proved to be, a permanent one in the unpeopled
wilderness at the foot of Otsego Lake. Except for this accident of
fortune, Leatherstocking and his companions of the forest never could
have been created by the pen of Cooper.

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