ZION PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH CEMETERY-MAURY COUNTY TENNESSEE
Matthew Delamere Cooper Born: 30 October 1792 - Chester District, South Carolina Died: 20 December 1878 - Tuesday- Columbia, Maury Co., Tenn. Buried: Zion Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Maury Co, Tenn. His three wives are buried beside him. He is interred in the ground with a large and imposing monument to his memory, but each of his wives were buried in box-like sarcophagus above the ground. 
The son of Capt. Robert Cooper (Rev. War Soldier) and Jane Hamilton Cooper. The most detailed account of his life will be found in the proceedings of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Tennessee - "Lodge of Sorrow" of November 1879 which was a memorial to him. He served 1824 as Deputy Grand Master when President Andrew Jackson was the Most Worshipful Grand Master; and in 1825 was elected Grand master and was re-elected in 1826 and continued to serve until 1827. 
Matthew D. Cooper was the youngest of thirteen children and not six years old when his father died which may account for the fact that none of his children were named after his father Capt. Robert Cooper. 
Married: (1) 5 April 1819, Maury Co., Tenn by Jas. W. Stephenson to Mary Agnes Frierson, Born: 1 Oct 1801 Died: 20 May 1834 - Maury Co., Tennessee She was the daughter of William Frierson IV, 1767-1820 and Jane Frierson, 1773-1817; Married 1792.
(2) 7 July 1835, Maury Col., Tenn. by Rev. Duncan Brown, M.G., Edmund Frierson, Bondsman. Elizabeth Jane Frierson Born: 6 October 1819 Died: 17 October 1838 Maury Co., Tennessee. She was the daughter of William James Frierson, 1775-1834, and Martha Elizabeth Frierson, 1780-1860; mar. August 15, 1799. 
(3) 24 June 1841, Maury Co., Tenn. by James M. Arnell, Pastor of Zion Presbyterian Church to. Marion Witherspoon Brown Born: 12 August 1822 Baptized by J.W. Stephenson, D.D. on Sept 13, 1822 Died: 16 March 1861 - Maury Co., Tennessee. She was the daughter of Rev. Duncan Brown-b 3 Oct. 1771 Roberson Co., N.C.; d. 6 July 1861, aged 90 yrs., buried at Zion Cemetery and Susannah Frierson, 1782-1822, the dau. of Robert Frierson. 
Mary Agnes Frierson Cooper died in May of 1834, leaving him with four children ranging in ages from fourteen to five. That same year he dissolved the company of Cooper, Caruthers & Co. on June 6 and shortly thereafter he entered into a partnership with an English cotton merchant by the name of Chapman, forming a banking and brokerage business in New Orleans. On July 7th of the next year he married Elizabeth Jane Frierson, a cousin of his first wife who was twenty-seven years his junior. The marriage lasted three years as she died with consumption when she was but a few days past nineteen. Her only child, Flavel Frierson Cooper was born on March 16th and she died on October 17th of 1838. 
After the death of his second wife, Matthew Cooper established another commission house in 1839 under the name of M.D. Cooper & Co., the company being Duncan Brown Frierson (1807-1863) and George O. Sweet. This firm continued until it was brought to an end by the depression of the Civil War. Matthew Cooper continued to keep his home in Columbia where he was also a member of another mercantile firm, but had also established a residence in New Orleans and he commuted between the two as did his children and servants. The next year after buying "Mulberry Hill", he married Marian (called Mary Ann) Witherspoon Brown, the daughter of the famed Rev. Duncan Brown. She was only nineteen and thirty years his junior. He was a successful business man with businesses in Tennessee and New Orleans. He had one of the most beautiful homes in the country staffed with countless servants and some hundred slaves who lived on the prosperous plantation. He was respected and honored by all who knew him. He had a total of 14 children; William Frierson, Edmund, Alfred, Jane, Henry, Mary Agnes, Flavel Frierson, Martha Ann, Duncan Brown, Alice Jane, Addison, Emma Sweet, Eloise, and Fannie Cooper. 
Ref: Hugh Cooper Fishing Creek So. Carolina and His Decendants, by Lillian L. Word Roberts published Dallas Texas 1976, excerpts from pages 619-622. Submitted by Mary Bob McClain Richardson. 8/24/04