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Name: COOPER, James Paten

Nee: son of Henry Douglas Cooper of Kirawa, Nairobi

Birth Date: 10 Dec 1916 Kirawa Farm, Kabete

Death Date: 28 July 2013 Dartmouth, Devon

First Date: 1916

Last Date: 1962

Profession: Coffee planter, stock farmer

Area: Kabete, Naivasha

Married: In Oxford 1946 Elizabeth 'Betty' Proctor Beauchamp b. 27 May 1922 Kennington, London, d. 30 Dec 2012 Dartmouth (dau. of Commander Harold Charles Beauchamp R.I.N.)

Children: Caroline (1949); Deborah (1951); Charles (1954)

Book Reference: EAWL, Kenton, mini-SITREP XIV

War Service: Kenya Reg. 37-39, 1/3 KAR. 3 EA Armd. Car Regt. 31 (Ny) KAR, Abyssinia, Madagascar, India 39-46

School: Kenton College - left 1928, Kijabe, Marlborough College, Pembroke College, Cambridge 1935-36

General Information:

One of the original '500' men in the Kenya Regt. in 1937. (KR 30)
Returned to Kenya in 1936 on death of father to run Kirawa Farm under direction of Major C. Taylor. 1949 in partnership with Major the Hon. Hugh Bampfylde, his son David Bampfylde and Robert Kingston Davies, bought Naivasha property from Mrs Arthur Cole known as Ol Aragwai, cattle, sheep and wheat.
mini-SITREP XIV - 'The Making of an African Soldier' - This is a personal story because beneath the English pallor of my face lies an African, for I was born in what was once called British East Africa and except for the years I spent in England at school and, briefly at University, I spent half my lifetime there. My father, a younger son of a country doctor in Marlborough; like many of his generation born in the latter half of Victoria's reign when the Empire was still growing and a matter of pride, looked to the Empire overseas for a career. South America in those days was almost an honorary part of the Empire and an Englishman was honoured and accepted. So after spending his early years in Chile my father came to BEA, or what is now called Kenya in 1904 - on the advice of an elder brother who was in the Foreign Service, sent out in 1897 as the Assistant Accountant for the building of the Uganda Railway. My father, in partnership with his brother and several others, took up land outside Nairobi and became one of the pioneers of the now prosperous Kenya coffee industry, but that is another story. Pioneers seldom make fortunes. When I returned to Kenya on the death of my father in 1936, coffee was selling on the London market for about £40 a ton or say 2p a pound in modern money. He had made no fortune at the end of 30 years of high endeavour but a living and a farm to pass on. On the home farm that year the gross value of the crop was about £2000. They were the years of the great slump, years of endurance and hope for the future. We were all in the same boat and we managed to enjoy ourselves with little money to spend. .......... (more) ........ In 1896 a Captain of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, Edgar Harrison, was seconded to the Sultan of Zanzibar's army, for the Sultan still retained a nominal rule over the coastal region of BEA under British protection; one of those polite Victorian euphemisms. Edgar Harrison was later to become one of my father's partners and a life long friend to him and his family. He was sent with a company of 100 Rifles to Machakos about 40 miles from Nairobi in the Ukamba Province. .......... (more) ............ On 1st September 1939 I was called up. I handed over the farm to the Swedish manager on the next door farm, Gunnar Andersson, who ran the farm for the next seven years at a salary of £240 a year. Charles Taylor, an old friend of my father's, supervised; charging nothing for his services, such was the spirit of those times and the bonds of friendship that existed. .….

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