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Born July 15, 1858, John Robinson Cooper was the third child and son of ten children born to John Jordan Cooper and Louisa Slay Cooper and their first child to be born at the Cooper Basin Homestead in Santa Rosa County, Florida. John Robinson's siblings were Henry Moses Cooper, William Erasmus Cooper, James Fountain Cooper, Michael Raleigh Cooper, Daniel Jordan Cooper, Selimea Cooper, Thomas W. S. Cooper, Susannah Demmerrea Cooper, and Joseph Franklin Cooper.
John was a farmer and like his brothers was involved in the timber industry. When John was twenty years old he married eighteen-year-old Martha Dorah Bloodworth from Alabama. She was one of the younger sisters of Winnie Bloodworth who married John's older brother, William, the previous year. John and Dorah were married on October 3, 1878, in Santa Rosa County, Florida. The Rites of Matrimony were solemnized by John's father, John Jordan Cooper, who was an elder at the Mt. Olivet Branch of the Reformed Latter Day Saints Church in Santa Rosa County. John and Dorah were blessed with their first child on September 25, 1879. Named Samuel Jackson Cooper, in life he was known as Jack and was John Jordan Cooper and Louisa Slay Cooper's third grandson. During their lives together, John R. and Dorah had six children, Samuel Jackson (September 25, 1879 to May 28, 1939), Ruiel (April 17, 1881 to January 28, 1883), Joseph Monroe (July 9, 1883 to March 20, 1886), Floyd M. (March 25, 1885 to 1948), Johny (April 26, 1887 to January 6, 1892), and Annie Mae Cooper (May 3, 1889 to July 2, 1854).
In April of 1883 Ruiel Cooper, John and Dorah's second child, died of pneumonia just before his second birthday. Their next loss was three years later when their third child, Joseph Monroe Cooper, drowned in Cooper Basin.
During the early months of 1892, a virulent strain of influenza swept over Santa Rosa County and took its toll on many families in the area. Everyone in John's family contracted the flu and several members of his family died, including his thirty-two-year-old wife Dorah and his four-year-old son Johny. The flu also took his father, John Jordan Cooper, and one of his older brothers, William Erasmus Cooper. John's oldest brother, Henry Moses Cooper, lost his wife Elizabeth Reed Cooper and their oldest son Henry. The flu also took John's maternal grandmother, Selimea Thompson Slay. John Robinson Cooper nearly died himself and never fully recovered. Because John was in a weakened state of health when the following year's strain of influenza arrived, he succumbed to the flu in August of 1893. After John's death his three surviving children, fourteen-year-old Samuel Jackson Cooper, eight-year-old Floyd M., and four-year-old Annie Mae Cooper were taken into their grandmother Louisa Slay Cooper's home. Eventually Louisa began to have a difficult time feeding and providing for her grandchildren; as a result, one of Dorah's sisters, Mary Lou Bloodworth Dean, and her husband Charles took their two nephews and niece to live with them near Pace, Florida.
John Robinson Cooper and his wife Martha Dorah Bloodworth Cooper are buried in the old Cooper Cemetery east of Cooper Basin near the old Homestead. Three of John and Dorah's children are also buried in the old Cooper cemetery: Johny Cooper, Ruiel Cooper, and Joseph Monroe Cooper. Samuel Jackson Cooper and his wife Mattie Hamilton Cooper are buried in the Milton Cemetery. Floyd M. Cooper and his wife Lorina Cooper are buried in the Hickory Hammock Cemetery east of Milton, Florida, and Annie Mae Cooper Hinote and her husband James Hinote are buried in the Strickland Cemetery in west Milton, Florida.
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