Mr Cooper's Town

Let’s get this out of the way right now. Though enshrined in American lore, Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball at Cooperstown, NY, in 1839, where Leesa and I are today. The earliest references to baseball-like games are from France (1344) and England (1744). The game varied from place-to-place and was imported to the US by British immigrants in the early 19th Century. We’ve toddled off to Cooperstown for a stay at the posh Otesaga Hotel and no two visitors there ever cared less about baseball. But I did learn a lot about William Cooper who founded the town and his son, James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans, among many other works. They didn’t like each other one bit and, shockingly, the reason was money. Here’s the 411*.