laura cooper ware
1870-1927
Life Story
Early Life in Reconstruction Mississippi
Laura Cooper was born in October 1870 in Mississippi during the uncertain years following the Civil War. She came of age in the early decades of Reconstruction, a period when newly emancipated African American families sought to establish stable homes, educate their children, and build independent lives despite increasing racial discrimination and the emergence of Jim Crow laws.
Unlike many African Americans of her generation who had little access to formal education, Laura learned to read and write. Her literacy reflected both personal determination and her family’s commitment to education, providing her with skills that would prove invaluable as she raised her own children and managed a growing household.
Marriage and Building a Family
Around 1888, at approximately eighteen years of age, Laura married Richard David Ware. Together they established their home in Beat 4 of Newton County, Mississippi, near the Lawrence community, where they would spend nearly four decades building a life centered on farming, family, and community.
Their marriage was one of partnership. While Richard worked the fields, Laura carried responsibilities that were equally essential to the family’s survival. Like countless rural Black women of the era, she managed the household, prepared meals, preserved food for the winter months, tended gardens and livestock, made clothing, cared for sick family members, and raised their children. The success of a farm depended not only upon the labor of the man behind the plow but also upon the quiet, relentless work of the woman who kept the household functioning each day.
Over the course of their marriage, Laura gave birth to seven children, though only five survived into adulthood. Like many mothers in the late nineteenth century, she experienced the heartbreak of infant loss while continuing to nurture the children entrusted to her care.
Life on the Ware Farm
The federal census records provide brief but meaningful glimpses into Laura’s life.
By 1900, the Ware household was bustling with young children. Arthur, Horace, Ardee, Richard Jr., Addie, and infant Ruby filled the family home with activity as Laura balanced the endless demands of motherhood with the responsibilities of rural life.
Ten years later, the family had entered a new season. The older boys were becoming young adults and beginning lives of their own, while Laura continued raising her younger daughters. By then, Lettie Ann, the youngest child, had completed the household.
The 1920 census records Laura under the familiar name “Lena,” the name by which neighbors apparently knew her. Living along the Newton and Hillsboro Crossing Road, she and Richard shared their home with eighteen-year-old Lettie and a one-year-old boy named William Marshall, whose exact relationship to the family remains one of several unresolved mysteries surrounding the Ware household.
Although census records cannot capture the rhythms of daily life, they reveal a household that endured through changing seasons, economic uncertainty, and the constant demands of farming in rural Mississippi.
A Family Tested by Tragedy
Laura’s quiet life changed dramatically in 1917.
According to contemporary newspaper accounts, one of the Ware daughters was allegedly sexually assaulted by James Marshall, a young man who had reportedly lived with the family “almost as one of the family.” Richard confronted Marshall on a rural road and fatally shot him before voluntarily surrendering to authorities.
The legal proceedings that followed naturally focused on Richard’s arrest, conviction for manslaughter, and eventual executive pardon. The historical record says very little about Laura during those difficult months.
Yet it is impossible to imagine that she escaped the emotional burden of the crisis.
While Richard faced imprisonment, Laura remained responsible for maintaining the family home, caring for her children, managing the daily responsibilities of the farm, and enduring the uncertainty that accompanied public scrutiny. Like many women whose names appear only briefly in official records, her strength is reflected not through newspaper headlines but through the family’s ability to endure one of the most difficult chapters in its history.
When Governor Theodore G. Bilbo granted Richard a pardon later that year, Laura welcomed her husband home, and together they resumed the work of rebuilding both their farm and their family life.
Final Years
In January 1926, Laura was diagnosed with uterine cancer, beginning an eighteen-month struggle with the disease. Medical care for African Americans in rural Mississippi during the 1920s was limited, and much of her care likely took place at home among family members.
Laura died on the evening of July 20, 1927, at the age of fifty-six.
Richard served as the informant on her death certificate, ensuring that her maiden name—Cooper—was preserved in the historical record for future generations. That simple act has allowed descendants and researchers to reconnect Laura to her birth family nearly a century later.
She was laid to rest the following day in Union Chapel Methodist Church Cemetery near Lawrence, Newton County, Mississippi, in the community where she had spent most of her married life.
A Legacy of Quiet Strength
Laura Cooper Ware left behind no speeches, public office, or written memoirs.
Instead, her legacy lives through the family she nurtured and the home she helped build.
For nearly forty years she stood beside Richard as they transformed their farm into a place of stability, raised children during some of the most turbulent decades in Mississippi’s history, and weathered hardships that would have broken many families. She experienced the joys of motherhood, the grief of losing children, the uncertainty of her husband’s imprisonment, and the daily realities of life under Jim Crow, yet she continued to provide the steady foundation upon which her family depended.
History often remembers the men who purchased land, appeared in courtrooms, or signed legal documents. Far less frequently does it preserve the stories of the women whose labor sustained those accomplishments.
Laura Cooper Ware reminds us that behind every successful farm, every surviving family, and every enduring legacy stood women whose contributions were rarely recorded but were absolutely indispensable. Her quiet perseverance helped carry one generation forward and laid the foundation upon which future generations of the Ware family would build.
Resting Place
Union Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery
Photos/Albums
Sources
- 1900 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, Enumeration District (ED) 93, sheet 10B, dwelling 189, family 189, Richard Ware household; Laura Ware’s birth recorded as October 1870 in Mississippi and her literacy noted. National Archives microfilm publication T623.
- Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 582–601; Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 3–29.
- 1900 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household; 1910 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, ED 102, sheet 6B, dwelling 104, family 104, Richard Ware household. Both censuses record Laura as literate.
- Newton County, Mississippi, Marriage Book 4, Richard D. Ware and Laura Cooper, marriage license and return, 1888; Newton County Chancery Clerk’s Office, Decatur, Mississippi.
- 1900 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household; 1910 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household; 1920 U.S. Census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, ED 112, sheet 8A, dwelling 132, family 132, Richard Ware household.
- Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 143–170; Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 89–118.
- 1900 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household. The census records Laura as the mother of seven children, five of whom were then living.
- 1900 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household.
- 1910 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household.
- 1920 U.S. Census, Richard Ware household. Laura is enumerated as “Lena,” residing with Richard Ware, daughter Lettie, and one-year-old William Marshall.
- The precise relationship of William Marshall to the Ware family has not been conclusively established. Although listed in the household as Richard and Laura Ware’s grandson, surviving records have not identified his parents. His identity remains an unresolved question requiring further research.
- The Newton Record (Newton, Miss.), August 1917, reporting the shooting of James Marshall and Richard Ware’s voluntary surrender to authorities.
- Newton County Circuit Court, State of Mississippi v. Richard D. Ware, manslaughter proceedings, 1917; Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.
- Petition requesting executive clemency for Richard D. Ware, submitted to Governor Theodore G. Bilbo, 1917; Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi; Executive Pardon issued by Governor Theodore G. Bilbo, October 1917.
- Mississippi State Board of Health, Certificate of Death for Laura Ware, July 20, 1927, Newton County, Mississippi, recording uterine cancer of approximately eighteen months’ duration as the cause of death; Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi.
- Ibid. Richard D. Ware served as the informant, identifying Laura’s maiden name as Cooper.
- Union Chapel Methodist Church Cemetery (Lawrence Community, Newton County, Mississippi), burial records and gravestone transcription for Laura Cooper Ware (1870–1927).
- Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom, 121–148; Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 163–187. Although focused partly on the transition from slavery to freedom, these works document the central role of African American women in sustaining families and rural households during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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