The Daily Alta California and other San Francisco newspapers reported that Dr. Cooper died on Monday morning at twenty minutes before nine o'clock on October 13th 1862 at his residence on Mission Street. It was the forty-first year of his life. Funeral services were held at 10 o'clock A. M. in Calvary Church on Wednesday October 15th. Reverend Dr. Wadsworth and Reverend Mr. Wells officiated, with the President of the University of the Pacific also participating in the exercises. The Officers of the University, the students and the medical classes, and the Faculty of the Medical Department, all were present. The church was well filled by Dr. Cooper's medical colleagues and the ladies and families who honored him as their physician. The deceased was under the formal escort of the Masonic Lodge, of which he was a respected member, and the pall bearers were prominent medical men of the community. In accordance with his dying wish he was interred in Lone Mountain Cemetery where the Occidental Lodge of Free Masons conducted the last sad rites of the sepulture. [7]
Cooper's premature death awakened throughout the community profound feelings of sorrow accompanied by a deep sense of loss.
These sentiments were reflected in the numerous laudatory obituaries that appeared in the daily press following his death. Included among the eulogies was a lengthy poem by T. G. Spear, Esq., of San Francisco. The following stanza denotes its theme: [8]
| Where art thou, son of science! born with zeal To cope with ills in life's corporeal sphere? Where is thy soul benignant, prone to heal Or soothe the pangs of prostrate mortals here? No answer greets us from the stars or waves, Nor echo back the mountains in reply, Nor the green garden-valleys, nor their graves - But, lo! it comes from voiced humanity! |
Monument on Lone Mountain
It was almost three years after Dr. Cooper's death when the following notice appeared in the Daily Alta California for 21 July 1865: [9]
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Over the tomb of Dr. E. S. Cooper, who a few years since, occupied a distinguished place in the medical fraternity of the coast, there has lately been erected (by Dr. Levi C. Lane) at Lone Mountain Cemetery, a very imposing as well as appropriate monument. The material is California granite, of a very beautiful quality and is the workmanship of a Mr. Farwell of this city. The monument consists of a shaft, in the form of an obelisk, which is nearly nineteen feet high, resting upon a base of such dimensions that the whole together is twenty-five feet in height, and presents all those elements of simplicity and enduring beauty which are the most befitting memorial to the dead. |
As befits a timeless reminder of the honored dead, no date is anywhere inscribed on the monument's surface. The stone bears only the simple inscription:
Sacred to the Memory of Elias S. Cooper, Surgeon
Lone Mountain Cemetery was on a brush-grown, treeless promontory known as Laurel Hill located beyond the western limits of the city and just north of Geary Street. The Cooper obelisk on its oval granite platform stood a solitary beacon high above the surrounding gravesites, commanding a grand vista of hills, city, ocean, and the rugged cliffs of the Golden Gate through which Cooper had passed ten years before. Eventually, the relentless advance of the city forced the removal of the cemetery. In 1946 the remains of Dr. E. S. Cooper were transferred to Vault 1395 in the Laurel Hill Mound of Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California. The obelisk and countless other unclaimed gravestones of sacred memory on Lone Mountain were carted off for landfill or other mundane use.
To be precise, not all of Cooper's remains are interred at Cypress Lawn. In former times certain organs of the deceased were for sentimental reasons occasionally buried at another site or preserved unburied. For example, a famous poet, twice married, expressed a dying wish that his heart be buried in the grave of his first wife. As a token of high regard for his uncle, Dr. Lane arranged for Dr. Cooper's brain and heart each to be preserved in a separate glass jar. The jars were then mounted side by side in a sturdy framework that allowed for clear display of the organs. The preservative used is unknown but was presumably effective as indicated by the excellent condition of the specimens and the clarity of the surrounding fluid when last seen.
Dr. Emmet Rixford reported in his Address at the Dedication of the Lane Medical Library in 1912 that the only money Dr. Lane received from his family was the sum of $ 80 from his mother's estate. Rixford further reported that, when Lane had completed the construction of Cooper Medical College in 1882, he used these $ 80 for a pedestal to support the heart and brain of Dr. Cooper which were originally kept in an inner sanctum of the College museum. [10] The pedestal and preserved organs were last seen in about 1979 in the attic of the former Lane Library in San Francisco, where they are no longer to be found. [11] It is hoped that the missing organs may yet be discovered in order to determine whether their examination by modern techniques will provide clues to the etiology of Elias Cooper's mysterious fatal illness.
Last Will and Testament
Cooper's personal papers contain no information regarding his will and the amount of his estate. Years later, after the Cooper Medical College had been established in elegant new buildings funded entirely by Levi Cooper Lane, a rumor was circulated that he had inherited the money for the buildings from his Uncle Elias. The persistence of this false report was of such annoyance to Dr. Lane that he provided the San Francisco Examiner for 5 January 1895 with a copy of the following deposition by a Mr. Joseph W. Reay who made the statement under oath in 1893 (thirty-one years after the death of Dr. Cooper). [12]
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State of California, City and County of San Francisco. Joseph W. Reay, being duly sworn, deposes and says he is a resident of the city and county of San Francisco and has been for more than forty-three years past (i. e. since 1850), that he was intimately acquainted with Dr. Elias S. Cooper during his lifetime and lived with him in the same house during all the time he was a resident of California and the city and county of San Francisco, and for many years he was his business agent, and after his death, which was in October, 1862, he was an executor of his will, and duly qualified and acted as such executor without compensation or commission from the estate. In his will Dr. Cooper bequeathed his entire estate to his relatives and he left no means, either by bequest in his will or by verbal request, for the erection of a medical college in this city or elsewhere. Deponent further says that the total value of the estate left by Dr. Elias S. Cooper, deceased, was $ 8,500, as more fully appears by the record of the Probate Court of this city and county. Deponent further says that Dr. Levi C. Lane advanced and contributed out of his private funds the sum of $ 1162.72 to pay some of the claims against Dr. Cooper's estate. Deponent further says upon his information and belief that the building in this city known as the Cooper Medical College was erected by Dr. Levi Cooper Lane from his own private means and was so named to honor his relative, Dr. E. S. Cooper. Further, affiant sayeth not. Signed J. W. Reay Subscribed and sworn to before me this 18th day of December, 1893. |
We have sought to obtain additional information from the courts regarding Dr. Cooper's estate and Mr. Reay. Unfortunately, the records of the San Francisco Probate Court for the period of Cooper's death in 1862 and of Reay's deposition in 1893 were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. Nothing relating to Cooper's estate is found in his personal papers where, regarding Mr. Reay, we find only numerous invoices (one of which includes a stove) dated 1856 to 1860 from the firm of Johnston and Reay, Plumbers, Tin, Copper and Sheet Iron Workers on Battery Street, San Francisco.
The San Francisco Directory for 1867 lists a J. W. Reay as a dealer in Stoves, and from 1868 to 1900 in Real Estate. By the close of the century, Mr. Reay had been joined in the real estate business by Joseph W. Reay, Jr., Charles G. Reay and Wallace R. Reay as "clerks." - presumably relatives. We believe the Joseph W. Reay whose deposition is quoted above is the same as the Reay in the San Francisco Directory. [13] However, none of our limited information on the subject allows us to verify Mr. Reay's statement in his deposition that he lived with Dr. Cooper "in the same house during all the time he was a resident of California and the city and county of San Francisco." In brief, the differences between what we know of Dr. Cooper's living arrangements and Mr. Reay's deposition are irreconcilable. We can otherwise accept his testimony and conclude that neither the school nor Dr. Lane benefited from the Cooper estate.
Prospective
We recognize Cooper's founding of the first medical college on the Pacific Coast in 1858 as an historic achievement for one sufficient reason - the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific was the forbear of a succession of schools from which Stanford University School of Medicine is the lineal descendent. With the departure from the scene of Elias Cooper, the prime mover, we shall turn our attention to the epic progression of these schools spanning almost a century and a half from 1858 to the present day.
We have seen the fierce and unscrupulous opposition over which Cooper prevailed in establishing the predecessor institution. Soon after his death an even graver threat confronted its faculty - the long anticipated opening of the Toland Medical School. Deprived of Cooper's strong leadership in this hour of crisis, the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific suspended operations in 1864 only two years after his death. But the faculty later rallied and the school was revived in 1870. Thereafter, it maintained a steady course and Elias Cooper could at last rest in peace on Lone Mountain: [14]
He builded better than he knew -
The conscious stone to beauty grew.