Have you ever heard of Coolville OH?

Coolville is a tiny little speck on the map of Ohio . . . with a population just over five hundred in 2000. The spelling is close to that of the fictional homebase of Mystery Inc (Coolsville OH) of Scooby Doo fame. It is also named after one of the branches of Rick's side of the family tree . . . the Cooleys.

The Cooleys came to America in the 1600s and settled in Massachusetts. In the 1700s Asahel Cooley responded to the alarm of April 19, 1775 . . . yep, the same alarm made famous by Paul Revere's Ride. Asahel lived in Springfield MA (a little less than a two-hour trip from Lexington today) so it took a bit longer to respond but Asahel marched with the other minutemen from Springfield on April 20th.

Captain Asahel Cooley headed west in 1798 to settle in Ohio where his eldest son founded the town of Coolville. Cool, huh?

Our line of Cooleys eventually moved on to settle in southern Iowa where Brendan and Olivia's great-great-great grandfather Charles Lincoln Cooley was born on April 17 1861 in Cantril IA. About four days after his 3rd birthday Charles lost his father, Benjamin, in the Civil War. Benjamin left behind his widow and seven children under the age of thirteen.


Reminiscences by Charles Lincoln Cooley:

About the first thing that I remember was all of us children being in the Soldiers' Home at Davenport, Iowa, where Mother was caring for us. We stayed there about six months. From there we moved to West Point, Iowa, where I was in school two or three years. When I was 12 years old, Mother emigrated to Kansas. My brother Henry drove the team, and Caleb and I walked from Cantril, Iowa, to Alton, Kansas, driving our 14 head of cattle. We crossed the River at Nebraska City. At that place Mother joined us, as she had stayed in Iowa to settle up affairs.

She had worked in a hospital while she was waiting for us to come along. Our trip with the cattle took us about four weeks. Mother and brother Henry both took a Homestead between the two Solomon Rivers in Osborn Co., Kansas. There was no settlement on the divide where they located. The same day we arrived I started out to hunt up work. I found a job gathering corn about 14 miles from home, getting fifty cents a day. From that time until I was twenty years old, I worked out, and brought the money home to Mother.

Brother Henry farmed the Homestead, and brother Caleb worked out what he could, but he was never very strong. The first pay that I got in Kansas was a quarter of beef. The farmer gave me a wagon and a pair of mules so that I could take the beef home. I started a little before sundown over the divide for the trip of 14 miles. There was no road or trail across the prairie until I got to the divide, where there was a ridge road. When I reached that, I was not sure which way to go, as it was now very dark. But I knew there was a stump down in the draw, and if I found that, I would be sure of my way. So I unhitched the inside tugs, and tied the lines to the wagon. On I went. But just as I put my hand on the stump I heard a lot of wolves begin to howl. I ran back to the wagon, unhitched the mules, and started back in the other direction. After going about four miles, I took another direction for home. Mother heard the wagon and thought someone was lost, so she put a lamp in the window. I had passed our Homestead. When I saw her light, I went quickly home to tell Mother she had lighted her own boy on the way.

After I was married I lived on brother Henry's homestead, and farmed that. By this time the country was beginning to settle up, and all our folks who came from Iowa would come to our place and stay until they got located. We lived in a dugout 16 feet square. Aunt Cal Tully, and Grandpa and Grandmother Vale stayed with us one winter while they built their dugout. Then Aunt Eva came back from Muscatine, Iowa with her boys, Elmer and Omer (Underwood). She left the boys with us and attended school at Hartland, Kansas, until she got her certificate for teaching.

About 1894 I traded a horse, a sow and pigs, and gave a note for $30, for a quarter section of land. Some years later we traded Mother's 80 acres for her homestead, which had a $300 mortgage on it. Shortly after that Aunt Lydia Cooley came from Kansas City to live with us. She had been aided by the Buckinghams, but they had failed in business and she had no means of support. Mother told us to take care of her, and that the way we treated her would be the way that our children treated us when we were old. She was 83 years old and lived with us for three years. Shortly after she came we had a very wet spring. The dugout leaked and a spring broke out under the floor. I went in debt and bought some land close by ours, where there was a small frame house with a good shingled roof, in order to have a good place for Aunt Lydia. This proved to be a good investment; the place had several acres of wheat on it, and we got a third share; in five months after I bought the place, I sold enough wheat to half pay for it. All through life I have found that it pays to help people in need, who are worthy of help.

Mother stayed with brother Henry most of the time, as he had a great deal of sickness. He was a good business man, but sickness and medical bills kept him from getting ahead. He carried $2,000 insurance in the Woodmen's Lodge, but because of sickness and hard luck was not able to keep up his payments. When the Judge told me they would have to suspend him, I kept him paid up for some five years. I never told him until one night when I sat with him when he was very sick. The great change that came over him paid me back many times for anything I had been able to do for him. He always cared for Mother in a wonderful way; her faith and her cheer never failed us; it shone on through all of the hard things which the years brought us.

Taken from The Cooley genealogy: the descendants of Ensign Benjamin Cooley, an early settler of Springfield and Longmeadow, Massachusetts by Mortimer E. Cooley

[Note: I believe that that Soldiers' Home of Davenport mentioned in the story is the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. To view pictures and a history of the home just do a Google search for Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home . . . I tried to add a link to a wikipedia article with good pictures but my blog cuts off part of the link so it doesn't work]