The Rev. Henry C. Cooper was the eldest of a family of four brothers,
who emigrated to Canada in 1832, and settled in what is known as the old Exeter settlement in the Huron tract. He was accompanied to Canada by his wife and two children, afterwards increased to nine, who endured with him all the hardships and privations of a bush life. In 1848 he was appointed to the rectory of Mimico, in the township of Etobicoke, to which was afterwards added the charge of the church and parish of St. George's, Islington, including the village of Lambton on the Humber.

In 1863, his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, became my wife. Our married life was in all respects a happy one, saddened only by anxieties arising from illness, which resulted in the death of one child, a daughter, at the age of six months, and of two others prematurely. These losses affected their mother's health, and she died in November, 1868, aged 36 years. To express my sense of her loss, I quote from Tennyson's "In Memoriam":

"The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts which pleased us well,
Through four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:

"And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:

"But where the path we walked began
To slant the fifth autumnal slope,
As we descended, following Hope,
There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;

"Who broke our fair companionship,
And spread his mantle dark and cold,
And wrapt thee formless in the fold,
And dull'd the murmur on thy lip;

"And bore thee where I could not see
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,
And think that somewhere in the waste
The Shadow sits and waits for me."

For the following epitaph on our infant daughter, I am myself responsible. It is carved on a tomb-stone where the mother and her little ones lie together in St. George's churchyard:

We loved thee as a budding flow'r
That bloomed in beauty for awhile;
We loved thee as a ray of light
To bless us with its sunny smile;

We loved thee as a heavenly gift
So rich, we trembled to possess,--
A hope to sweeten life's decline,
And charm our griefs to happiness.

The flower, the ray, the hope is past--
The chill of death rests on thy brow--
But ah! our Father's will be done,
We love thee as an angel now!

Mr. Cooper died Sept. 10, 1877, leaving behind him the reputation of an earnest, upright life, and a strong attachment to the evangelical school in the English Church. His widow still resides at St. George's Hill, with one of her daughters. Two of her sons are in the ministry, the Rev. Horace Cooper, of Lloydtown, and the Rev. Robert St. P. O. Cooper, of Chatham.

One of Mr. H. C. Cooper's brothers became Judge Cooper, of Huron, who died some years since. Another, still living, is Mr. C. W. Cooper, barrister, formerly of Toronto, now of Chicago. He was recording secretary to the B. A. League, in 1849, and is a talented writer for the press.