[Archived] A Look at Alexandria s General Samuel Cooper-May 15

Lecture to be held May 15
 
The Alexandria Civil War Sesquicentennial lecture series continues this month with a presentation entitled A Look at Alexandria’s General Samuel Cooper, the Highest-Ranking Officer of the Confederacy by Marion Dawson Robinette.  Ms. Robinette is a descendant of General Cooper, and will use family materials not readily available to the general public in her presentation.

Born in 1798 at Dutchess County, New York, and a graduate of the United States Military Academy in that state, Samuel Cooper married Sarah Maria Mason of Virginia in 1827 and a decade later he became Chief Clerk of the U.S. War Department in Washington, D.C.  He served during the Mexican-American War, and in 1857 he acted briefly as U.S. Secretary of War. A close friend of Jefferson Davis, in March 1861 he resigned his command as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army, and traveled to Montgomery Alabama to join the Confederate Army,  where he was commissioned as a brigadier general. Ms. Robinette, his great-great granddaughter, will discuss General Cooper’s character, personal life and service in the United States and Confederate armies, and his life after the war in Alexandria, where he died in 1876 at the age of 78. 

The lecture will be held on Thursday, May 15, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. at the historic Lloyd House, 220 North Washington Street, Alexandria, Virginia.  Admission is free, and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.  There will be a short period for questions and light refreshments afterward.
This program will be the seventh of eight monthly lecture and film presentations during 2013-2014 on the American Civil War, sponsored by the Historic Alexandria Resources Commission, Alexandria American Civil War Sesquicentennial Sub-committee, and the Office of Historic Alexandri