A beautiful, tender, and touching tribute to the love of his life was Fenimore Cooper's will. In part it reads: "I, James Fenimore Cooper, give and bequeath to my wife, Susan Augusta, all my property, whether personal or mixed, to be enjoyed by her and her heirs forever. I make my said wife the executrix of my will."
In a little over four months his wife followed him to the far country. Of his children, Elizabeth, the first-born, died in infancy; Susan Augusta, the author, was the second; the third, Caroline Martha, became Mrs. Henry Frederick Phinney; next came Anne Charlotte, then Maria Frances, who married Richard
Cooper; Fenimore, the first son, they lost in babyhood, and Paul Fenimore, the youngest, became a member of the bar in Albany, New York.
Cooper left his family a competency, but the Hall home soon passed into other hands; later it was burnt. From rescued brick an attractive house was built on the west bank of the Susquehanna for his daughters Susan Augusta and Anne Charlotte, both now resting near father and mother in Christ's Church yard. Their niece, Miss Susan Augusta Cooper, daughter of their sister, Maria Frances, Mrs. Richard Cooper, now lives in this picturesque house, and there she reverently treasures many personal
belongings of her famous grandfather, and also those of her author-aunt, Susan Augusta Cooper, whose best memorial, however, is the noble orphanage on the river-bank some ways below. The oaken doors saved from the flames of the burning Hall served for this new home, which overlooked the grounds of their old home. The site of the latter is marked by Ward's "Indian Hunter." Aptly placed, peering through mists of green toward the author's church-yard grave, he is a most fitting guardian of the one-time garden of Fenimore Cooper.