Site of Cooper School and Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Two Arkansas natives, James, known as J. D., and Dora Cooper, came out to Wichita County and established an early farmstead right here, about 1900.

Now, that alone is a story. Carving something out of nothing, putting down roots in new soil. But J.

D. Cooper wasn't the kind of man to stop at a farmstead. By 1910, he had gone and persuaded the county, persuaded them, to create an entire school district for the community of Cooper, which had grown up in the surrounding area.

And Cooper School was built, right about that same year. You start to get a picture of a man who could talk a county into things. Cooper Methodist Church followed, organized in 1913, and in those early years it held its services right there in the school building.

Sharing space, the way small communities do when everyone's still building toward something better. Then, about 1916, a chapel was built. A proper chapel, a place of their own.

And here's where the story gets that particular kind of satisfying. In 1922, that chapel was relocated, moved right here, to a site near the newly erected Cooper School building. The church and the school, finally neighbors, the way a community like Cooper probably always figured they ought to be.

It held together for years. But communities shift, and consolidations come, and in 1927 and 1928 the school merged with the Cashion School District. Then in 1947, Cooper Methodist Church merged with Friberg Methodist Church.

Two names folded into others. But J. D. and Dora Cooper came out of Arkansas, built a farmstead, and wound up with a school, a church, and a whole community carrying their name.

That marker's still here to prove it.

What the marker says

Arkansas natives James (J. D.) and Dora Cooper established an early farmstead here about 1900. In 1910 J. D. Cooper persuaded the county to create a school district for the community of Cooper which had developed in the area. Cooper School was built about 1910. Cooper Methodist Church, organized in 1913, held services in the school until a chapel was built about 1916. The chapel was relocated here in 1922 to a site near the newly erected Cooper School building. The school merged with the Cashion School District in 1927-28 and Cooper Methodist Church merged with Friberg Methodist Church in 1947.