Stories and information from the farm, family and ancestors of Joe & Bessie Cooper
Joe in front of one of the vans 1936
The picture was taken for a sanitary inspectors conference
Bob with van - note wartime blackout on the headlights
Horses splitting ridges - Earnest Dalton in Cinderpath field. Photo taken by George
Joe Cooper in office with customer a/c books
Not a flattering photo
Three vans on the lane
from one of the promotional calendars
Walter Moses with Rushton tractor pulling a horse plough possibly at Spa Bottom
Norah feeding hens photo used extensively for publicity
Joe with the pony and trap - three children standing by the fence
Publicity photos of Land Girls probably for newspaper article
Silage making demonstration during WW2
Note the 5 Land Girls sitting on the fence
A cut down car, a tractor and a horse in the same field
We think that this is the first Coopers van, it's clearly an early one - no pictures of medals etc, no board on the top and no phone number.
Joe is sitting in the drivers seat. It is a Chevrolet and is outside Stuttards Garage, in Knaresborough Road, Harrogate.
Dad reminded me that when the van was delivered, Bennie Stuttard drove it out to Home Farm, giving Joe his one and only driving lesson while driving Mr Studdard back to the garage in Knaresborough Road Harrogate. After which, he set him off on his own back to Home Farm. The Driving test wasn't introduced until 1935 and that was only for people who started driving after 1934.
The van is the third one in this calendar for 1930.
the blizzard - for silage making
Bottles and a van, George is in short trousers
A hand coloured photo of Mr Hunter, the horseman bringing horses down the Avenue
Publicity photo of milk bottling, Dorothy at the table
Bus tickets
I found an envelope marked bus tickets.
The Coopers kept many things but I thought that keeping bus tickets was going a bit far, when I tipped them on to the table I could see why they had been kept.
On the back they had adverts for Coopers milk, there is no means of dating them but I guess that they are from 1920s or 1930s. TT stands for Tuberculin Tested.
