Lizzie Cooper and her Music
You and your lady friend are cordially invited to a concert given by the Home Musical Society Tuesday evening June 30th[1885] at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Cooper College ave. at 7.30 P.M. [1]
This invitation, being very old, is a peephole to a different world. Few people nowadays have live concerts in their homes. Garage bands are still around, and church choirs are an important part of the musical landscape. But before music was readily available technologically, you had to make, play, or sing it yourself. And if you had not the talent or time to sing or play, you relied on local performers. To some, music comes naturally. Many who can play an instrument can easily play others. The rest of us listen with slack jaws, wondering how they do that? To summarize, you either have the gift of music or not.
One Westerville woman who did was the sender of the above invitation, Lizzie Cooper. Cooper (1872-1944) was a musician, skilled on the piano. Lizzie had an impressive musical resume. In 1891, she was part of a trio that played selections from the opera Tancredi.[2] Cooper was a member of the Otterbein Euterpean Quintette in 1890, and spent “the months of July and August in Ohio and Indiana giving concerts.”3 She sang as well; she and Kittie Cober and Mattie Bender performed the song, “Goodnight, Beloved” at the Philalethean Society in February, 1891.[3]
Lizzie Cooper graduated from Otterbein in 1893, giving as her commencement speech, “The Ethics of Music.”[4] She married fellow musician Frank Resler in 1894. They had one son, Frank Jordan Resler.[5] By 1902, Lizzie was teaching piano and organ at what is now Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.[6] In later years she served as a trustee of the college, while she and her husband both were on the music department faculty. Lizzie Cooper Resler died in Columbus in 1944.[7]
In doing the research for this essay, I realized that the wedding took place at the home of the bride’s parents, none other than the Abram Cooper house, and that Abram was her father. Readers of these sketches may recall, a few posts back, my story on “Daddy” Cooper and the Cooper house. Same family, same missing house, where once a young Lizzie Cooper hosted music lovers on a warm June evening in 1885.
Lizzie Cooper