Chapter 3 – William and Judith Cooper and their children

William and Judith Cooper and their children

Judith Cooper and her children. Judith’s husband William died in 1865

In Chapter 2 – the Wedding,  I left Joseph and Sarah Dangerfield, my great-great grandparent’s, on 27th June 1850, at their wedding at St Stephens Church Willunga.

At that time, the relationship between the Dangerfield’s and their friends Judith and William Cooper was that of friendship only. It would not be until their second and third generations that some of their children and grandchildren would marry and thus unite the families of the O’Connor’s, Coopers, Dangerfield’s, Thoday’s and Laube’s.

William and Judith Cooper had nine children. Their names were William Paul, Thomas, Elizabeth,  George Alfred, Joel, Jane, John, Robert and James Jonadab. One of William and Judith’s sons, George Alfred Cooper, married Harriett (Peverett, Place) in 1853.

George and Harriet Cooper had  a son named Shadrach Cooper,  born in 1857. Shadrach married Sarah Thoday in 1882 (b. 1858) and she was the daughter of my great-grandparents Henry and Maria Thoday).

Shadrach and Sarah Cooper’s daughter, Esther Maude (Lottie) Cooper (b 26th Aug 1886 and baptized 1907 at Kadina) married my great-uncle William Charles Dangerfield (b. 5th Nov 1877)  on 6th Mar 1909.

William Charles (Charles) Dangerfield was the son of Joseph and Margaret Dangerfield (Thoday) and he was my grandmother Alice Maud Dangerfield’s brother. Through the process of intermarriage, our diverse families became inextricably linked together.

Charles and Lottie Dangerfield (Cooper) are Allan Dangerfield’s parents, Allan Dangerfield married Phyllis Cobbledick and they are the parents of Maureen, Ian and Adrian Dangerfield..

Prior to his marriage to Lottie Cooper, Charles farmed with his father Joseph Dangerfield 2 on the West Coast of Australia but when drought hit the area, Charles joined the mining fraternity at Broken Hill. For a short time he even worked at Leaham in Tasmania. When Charles married Lottie Cooper he began building houses in Victoria at Rutherglen. When that work dried up he returned to South Australia where he took up work as a carpenter and cabinet maker. It was not long before his brother Henry joined him in the work and together they built some splendid homes. They began using cement blocks all made by hand. They tamped the cement mixture in a machine using different patterned plates to give character to the front of each block. These blocks were then used on the outside walls of the houses the two brothers built.

Genealogy of Sarah and Shadrach Cooper 2.

Charles and Lottie during this period were blessed with two children, Winifred (Winnie) (b 1st Aug 1910 at Brighton and Mervin (b 23rd Apr 1902.). With war approaching there was another slump in the building trade and William Charles again obtained employment in the mines in Broken Hill. Charles purchased a little stone cottage in the Broken Hill township. While in ‘the Hill,’ the family experienced some dreadful dust storms and electrical storms and also extreme heat during the summer. Shortage of water was common as the only water storage was from Umberumber Reservoir – a very small reservoir according to today’s standards. Often water was only turned on to the houses for two hours a day. At the children’s school all drinking water had to pass through a charcoal filter before it was fit to drink.

Genealogy of Sarah and Shadrach Cooper 1

(It was while they were living in Broken Hill that Allan and Lloyd were born, Allan on 13th Apr 1915 and Leslie Lloyd on 21st May 1921 (baptized 26th Apr 1939. Lloyd married Gwenneth Shirley Dangerfield (Walker) who was baptized on 11th June 1941. Allan was baptized on 2nd Dec 1932 and married Phyllis Irene Cobbledick (baptized 1st Nov 1932.)).

Not long after this there were strikes in the mines and Charles feared they would be of long duration and he could find himself out of work once more. He could have stayed in Broken Hill on the off chance that the strikes would end but if they did not, then he knew he would have to go ‘on the dole’ and his pride would not let him do this, so South Australia seemed like the best option. If work was hard to find at least Charles was grateful that Lottie had proved herself to be a wonderful manager. Resourcefulness and good management must have run in the Cooper family because Lottie Dangerfield (Cooper) told a story about her father’s two younger brothers, Robert Joel (Joe) Cooper and George Henry (Harry) Cooper which was quite remarkable.