ONE HUNDRED TO-DAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 187, 9 August 1941, Page 4

ONE HUNDRED TO-DAY

MR. J. J. COOPER, ONEHUNGA LIFE OF ADVENTURE Sailor, soldier, gold-digger and farmer are some of the occupations "Which have been followed by Mr. James Joseph Cooper, who celebrated his 100 th birthday to-day at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. G. Vazey, Arthur Street, Onehunga. He has lived for 78 years in New Zealand. By his own reckoning Mr. Cooper should be 101 years old to-day, but his birth certificate, recently received from England, shows that he was born at Cromer, Norfolk, in 1841. As a lad of 13 Mr. Cooper went to sea and sailed the seven seas for nine years, before arriving at Auckland in 1863 as a member of the crew of the vessel Ironsides, famous as the first iron sailing ship built in Great Britain. The war which was being fought in the Waikato at that time attracted him to new adventures and he swam ashore at Mechanics' Bay, walked to Mercer and enlisted for service. He was then posted to the Waikato River gunboat Gundagai and later served m naval vessels on the west coast. After obtaining his discharge Mr. Cooper went to the Otago goklfields and later joined the rush to Westland. Returning to Auckland in 1873 he married and took up farming at Pakuranga. Nearly 30 years later, on the death of his wife, he set up in business as a ship chandler and sailmnker at Onehunga, where he worked until his retirement. Three of the five children and six step-children survive, and there are 3G grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.