In this story of a frontier village in the early American Republic, Alan
Taylor explores the lives of Judge William Cooper and the novelist James
Fenimore Cooper - father and son. As frontier speculator, landlord, and
politician, the father played a leading role in the conquest,
resettlement, and environmental transformation of the early nation.
Drawing upon his childhood memories of the New York frontier, the son
created the historical fictions that made him the most popular,
influential, and controversial American novelist of the early nineteenth
century. Taylor makes it clear that in a rapidly changing nation William
Cooper's development of Cooperstown and his son's creation of the
village of Templeton in The Pioneers were different stages of a common
effort, over two generations, to create, sustain, and justify a wealthy
and powerful estate. Both sought that unity of social, economic,
political, and cultural authority idealized in colonial America but at
odds with the legacy of the American Revolution. William Cooper's Town
combines biography, social history, and literary analysis. By breaching
the barriers that separate political, social, and literary history,
Taylor reveals the interplay of frontier settlement and narrative-making
in the early American Republic. He examines how Americans resolved their
revolution through the creation of new property, new power, and new
stories along their extensive frontier.