Scholarly Survey: Henry Cooper Sims and His Legacy

HENRY COOPER SIMS: From the low country to Indian Territory

My cousin, Dianne Burton, is an expert archivist, finding very important pieces of information out of what sometimes appears to be thin air. None of our research would be valid or present without her research and without her archives. These archives are attributed to Henry Cooper Sims.

Henry Cooper Sims was born in the 1820s in South Carolina and is said to have been of Creek origin. Forced to migrate to Mississippi due to the pressures of the time, he eventually settled in the region. In Mississippi, he married Ellen, a Choctaw woman, and they had a family. Among their children were WH Sims, their eldest, and another son, Augustus Gustave Sims, Sr. By the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, Henry had established a life in Oklahoma, where he owned over 200 acres of land, a significant achievement for his family and a testament to their resilience and adaptation in the face of hardship.

--Archives located by Grace Dianne Burton on Ancestry.com and other locations