Cooperstown, residential and resort
village (2020 pop. 1,738), seat of Otsego co., E central N.Y., on the
Susquehanna River and Otsego Lake; inc. 1807. It was founded by William
Cooper, who brought his family there in 1790. His son, James Fenimore
Cooper, made his
home in Cooperstown after 1836, and the region is described in his
Leatherstocking Tales. Fenimore House is the
headquarters of the New York State Historical Association. Other museums
include the Fenimore Art Museum, the Farmers' Museum, and the National
Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (1939), which commemorates the (now
discredited) invention (1839) of baseball here by Abner Doubleday. The Glimmerglass Opera
(Glimmerglass was J. F. Cooper's name for Otsego Lake) also draws
visitors.
See A. Taylor, William Cooper's Town (1995).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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