Maurice W. Cooley (1861-1930) was born in Newburgh, New York, and died in
Grand Junction, Colorado. Cooley studied civil engineering at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1884. He moved to
Toledo, Ohio, where he worked as a civil engineer on the Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas
City Railroad. In 1887, he married Emma E. Cooley (b. Erwin) in Toledo. The Cooleys
studied Christian Science with Sarah J. Clark, a student of Mary Baker Eddy, sometime
during the 1880s, and they later joined The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, Massachusetts, on December 31, 1892. The couple were active Christian
Scientists, and in 1898 they assisted in the construction of First Church of Christ,
Scientist, Toledo, Ohio, of which Cooley was Chairman of the Board of Trustees. They
were both listed in the directory of
The Christian Science
Journal as Christian Science practitioners in Toledo from 1894 to 1898, after
which Maurice stopped but Emma continued. Cooley was a Spanish American War veteran,
serving as a captain in Company C. B. of the 2nd U.S. Volunteer Engineers, in Cuba in
1899. By 1900, Cooley returned to his home state of New York and resumed his civil
engineering work, which required frequent travel. He ended up in Colorado shortly
thereafter, being ordered out of Venezuela after an uprising there. The couple lived in
Mack, Colorado, and by 1910, the Cooleys were living in Dragon, Utah. Cooley worked as
general manager of the Uintah Railway, a small narrow gauge railroad company in Utah and
Colorado, until around 1922. It seems as though the couple parted ways, with Emma
residing in San Diego, California, for the rest of her life, while Maurice left for St.
Louis, Missouri, to take a position with the American Asphalt Company. Soon after, he
traveled to Cuba to open some mines, and he then made his way to Long Island, New York,
where he sold real estate. Cooley was an amateur ornithologist, and a member of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Railway Engineering Association, and
the Freemasons.
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