Esaias Samuel Cooper, Elias's older brother, was also born near Somerville, Ohio, on the family farm where he worked during his youth. Otherwise we know little of his early years except that he was a diligent and precocious young man. It was said that he studied at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, only six miles from his birthplace. However, the records of the University covering the period of 1809 to 1855 do not show a registration for Esaias or either of the other two Cooper brothers. [12] [13]
We have already reported that Esaias left home in 1835 to begin his medical studies, presumably an apprenticeship, with a Dr. Waugh in Indiana. We have seen that he attended Ohio Medical College for two four-month terms, the first in 1838-39 and the second in 1839-40. Upon completion of his first term in 1839, at the age of twenty, he probably either resumed his apprenticeship or began the general practice of medicine in Greenfield, a small town in central Indiana about 20 miles east of Indianapolis. He had no medical degree at the time but, as we have noted, this was no bar to practicing medicine in those days.
In 1843 he married and moved from Greenfield, Indiana, to Henderson near Galesburg in Knox County, Illinois (just east of the Mississippi River). There he continued general practice and cultivated the scholarly interests he developed as a boy. These included botany (he was familiar with the name and properties of almost every plant in North America), and the sciences of mathematics and astronomy (he calculated all the eclipses of the century at the age of 17). He was deeply read in the holy scriptures and well versed in the Latin tongue. [14]
As a result of his industrious efforts, he was awarded an A. M. degree by Knox College in 1849 and in 1850 was granted additional academic honors: an M.D. degree ad eundem from the Medical Department of St. Louis University and an A. M. degree from Hanover College. Also in 1850 he received an honorary M. D. degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago. [15] Later, the Thirteenth Annual Catalogue of Rush Medical College carried the announcement that in 1855 "an excellent Thesis, written in Latin, was received from Dr. E. S. Cooper of Henderson, Illinois."
Both Elias and Levi Cooper Lane served medical apprenticeships with Esaias. He had seven children, three of whom became doctors and served apprenticeships with their father. [16]