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| - Coopwood was born on May 1, 1827, in Lawrence County, Alabama. He moved to Texas in 1846 and fought in a cavalry regiment in the Mexican–American War. In 1854 he moved to California, where he was admitted to the bar, practicing in Los Angeles. Following the killing of Sheriff James R. Barton by the Flores Daniel Gang, Coopwood led twenty-six El Monte men, as a division of the posse in the manhunt for the gang.
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abstract
| - Coopwood was born on May 1, 1827, in Lawrence County, Alabama. He moved to Texas in 1846 and fought in a cavalry regiment in the Mexican–American War. In 1854 he moved to California, where he was admitted to the bar, practicing in Los Angeles. Following the killing of Sheriff James R. Barton by the Flores Daniel Gang, Coopwood led twenty-six El Monte men, as a division of the posse in the manhunt for the gang. In 1857, at the age of thirty he came to San Bernardino as part of a syndicate that purchased the balance of the Rancho San Bernardino from Ebenezer Hanks for $18,000. Hanks had previously purchased a one-third interest in the grant, with Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich leaders of the Mormon colonists of San Bernardino from the original grantee José del Carmen Lugo. Coopwood remained in San Bernardino until 1861, as realtor and a lawyer and with an excellent knowledge of Spanish and a number of Mexican clients, most of whom were very well off. Coopwood although of southern sympathies himself, sheltered the pro Union Doctor Ainsworth in his own home from a mob of pro southern sympathies and was wounded in the shootout that was the climax of the 1859 "Ainsworth-Gentry Affair." That same year he married Josephine Woodward and they eventually had fourteen children. In the bitterly contested campaign of 1860, Charles W. Piercy was nominated for member of the 1st District of the California General Assembly by one party, and W. A. Conn the incumbent, by the other. Piercy was elected, but there was a claim of fraud. The accusation was that polls at Temescal, maintained by a resident named James Greenwade, kept open shop for three weeks and that whenever candidate Piercy was in need of more votes, they were furnished from this precinct. The case was taken to court, where the two opposing lawyers, H. M. Willis and Bethel Coopwood, had a fight in court wherein Coopwood sustained a slight wound, but won the case.
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