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WHAT IS CURRENTLY KNOWN ABOUT CORYDON E. COOLEY
My great grandfather was named Corydon Eliphalet Cooley and often went by C.E. Cooley, or the honorary title of Colonel Cooley. He was born April 2, 1836 and died March 18, 1917 (although his government provided headstone mistakenly says 1915). It is said that he came from a well to do family of Irish decent in Loudoun County, Virginia at or near the town of Staunton. He attended Bethany College in West Virginia before coming west when he was about 20 years old. In 1856 it is known that he was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then following the lure of Colorado's Pike's Peak gold rush he worked at a trading post in the Denver area for a time. When the Civil War started he joined the New Mexico Volunteers and served under Kit Carson fighting the Texas Confederacy. He served as Quartermaster and attained the rank of 1st Lieutenant. He was praised for his service and courage by his superiors. In one of the battles a bullet grazed the end of his nose. In April of 1863 he resigned from the service due to medical reasons and for several years ran a hotel near Las Vegas, New Mexico. In July of 1869 Cooley and two friends convinced some Apaches to take them into Arizona Territory in search of a lost gold mine. Their adventures and Cooley's eventual service with General George Crook at Fort Apache is well documented in various books, magazines and stories of early Arizona history.
What we are really missing is anything before Corydon came west. We don't know the names of his parents or where they came from. According to his daughter Lillie, Corydon had 3 sisters named Belle, Lillie and Cora and he later named his 3 daughters after them, but I can find no record of them. I have checked census records, birth and death records, property records and military records with no luck. In the 1910 census record Corydon stated that his father was born in Michigan, but that is all the information there is. In the 1900 census it says his father and mother were born in Virginia. The Cooley Family Association web page says "Peter Cooley sailed from London with his three sons and settled in Virginia just prior to the Revolution", but I don't know if they are connected to my Cooley relatives. Although there were many Cooley’s living in Virginia in the mid 1800s, none of the records that I’ve seen tie him in with any particular Cooley family. I have found an Eliphalet Cooley from Connecticut, born 1745, and another Eliphalet Cooley from Massachusetts, born 1814, but was unable to connect either one with Corydon. Another troubling fact is that there is no town by the name of Staunton in Loudoun County and as far as I can tell there never has been. There is a city named Staunton in Virginia, but it’s nowhere near Loudoun County. Also, even though Bethany College still exists, it has no record of him. Longtime Arizona Senator and history buff Carl Hayden (from a letter in the Cooley file at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson) had this to say on the matter “Cooley was not a graduate of Bethany College. The college records prior to the Civil War are not complete and it is possible that he was a student there for a time”. My brother Glenn West, went to Virginia and also tried to confirm that Corydon attended Bethany College, but was told the early records had burned.
Another puzzling thing is that no one seems to know if Corydon ever had any contact with his family back east. There are two news items that I found in notes from the Corydon Cooley file at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson that tell of Corydon taking a trip to St. Louis, but they say very little. The first one from “The Holbrook Argus” 10/08/1904, simply states that Corydon and his son’s Don and Burt were going to St. Louis. The second article from “The Holbrook Argus” 10/29/1904, only says that C. E. Cooley and his son Don arrived back from a trip to St. Louis. However, Corydon is quoted as saying “this is my second trip in 35 years and I don’t care to take another for the next half century”.
I am no expert in genealogy, but frankly, I am beginning to wonder if Corydon possibly changed his name when he came out West to start a new life.
Lonnie Amos West
(Grandson of Belle Crook Cooley Amos)
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