FENIMORE COOPER’S SCREEN GIFT.  From a print by courtesy of Miss Alice
Bailey Keese

BISHOP WILLIAM HEATHCOTE DE LANCEY.  From Scharf’s “History of
Westchester County, NY”

DE LANCEY COAT OF ARMS. From “A God-Child of Washington,” by Katherine
Schuyler Baxter

THE NEW HOME AND THE OLD HOME.

INDIAN HUNTER.  By J.Q.A.  Ward

COOPER GROUNDS.  From a photograph by A.J.  Telfer

THE CHILDREN’S TRIBUTE.  From a photograph by A.J.  Telfer

LAKE OTSEGO.  From a photograph by A.J.  Telfer

LEATHERSTOCKING FIGURE OF COOPER MEMORIAL.  From a photograph by A.J. 
Telfer

LEATHERSTOCKING MONUMENT.  By R.E.  Launitz, N.A.  From a photograph by
A.J.  Telfer

GEORGE POMEROY KEESE.  From a photograph by permission of Mrs. George
Pomeroy Keese

BERRY POMEROY CASTLE.  By courtesy of Mr. George Pomeroy Keese

Acknowledgment is due The F.A.  Ringler Company of New York City and Messrs. John Andrew and Son of Boston, Mass., for the care and interest they have shown in making the cuts used in this volume.

[Illustration:  THE ENGLISH FYNAMORE COUNTRY AND FAMILY ARMS.]

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

[Illustration:  COOPER’S BIRTHPLACE, Burlington, N.J.]

The light of this world fell on James Fenimore Cooper September 15, 1789.  The founder of American romance was born in a quaint, two-storied house of stuccoed brick which now numbers 457 Main St., Burlington, New Jersey.  It was then “the last house but one as you go into the country” and among the best of the town.  In a like house next door lived the father of the naval hero, Capt.  James Lawrence.  These two houses opened directly on the street and their slanting roofs were shaded by tall trees rooted at the curbstones.  This outline of Fenimore Cooper’s birthplace is from the text-picture in “Literary Rambles,” by Theodore F. Wolfe, M.D., Ph.D.  The first of his father’s family in this new country was James Cooper, who came from Stratford-on-Avon, England, in 1679.  He and his wife were Quakers, and with Quaker thrift bought wide tracts of land in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  Seventy-five years after James Cooper stepped on American soil his great-grandson William was born, December 2, 1754, in Byberry township, Pennsylvania.

On December 12, 1775, at Burlington, New Jersey, William Cooper married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Fenimore, whose family came from Oxfordshire of Old England, and, at intervals, held office in her provinces.  James, the future author and named for his grandfather Cooper, was the eleventh of twelve children.  About 1807 Cooper, by request of his mother, said he would adopt the name of Fenimore as there were no men of her family to continue it.  The change was delayed by the untimely death of Judge Cooper, and also to make less difficult the settlement of his large estate.  But in 1826 James Cooper applied to the legislature