Cooper T. Smith

Description

The story of the Cooper family is as interesting as a saga out of the old west. It begins right after the Civil War when Henry Harrison Cooper and his two brothers came to the New World from Scotland and settled in South Carolina. They soon immigrated to Alabama and settled in Baldwin County in an area later appropriately named Rosinton. They were rosin farmers securing rosin for naval stores from the plentiful Baldwin County pine trees. Each of the three brothers married one of the McKenzie sisters, homesteaded 160 acres each, and put their roots down to establish ties which would link their descendants firmly to Alabama over the next century and more. Henry Harrison Cooper and his wife, Matilda McKenzie Cooper, had fourteen children; the next to youngest was named Angus Royal Cooper. It was this son who established the waterfront tradition which the family would follow for generations. Angus was born in 1877, and at an early age he went to work on the Mobile docks as a tally man (one who counts the ships cargoes). His early days on the docks prepared him to build a strong stevedoring company that would be expanded by his sons and grandsons into the second largest stevedoring company in America. It was on February 5, 1905, that he established what has now become Cooper/T. Smith Corporation through various name changes and acquisitions over the years. In 1925, Angus Cooper and his family moved to New Orleans where he would expand his stevedoring business and manage the Munson Line’s gulf-wide operations. The Munson Line prospered so well that Munson built one of the first true skyscrapers in New York City; however, hard times hit when the bottom fell out of the economy in 1929, and Munson Line fell into financial difficulty. Angus Cooper continued handling stevedoring for one of Munson’s allies, Alcoa Steamship Company, and as a result the Munson Line surrendered all of their equipment in lieu of pay. This was the next big step in building a significant family owned stevedoring company.

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