Cooley, Bertha Strong

Bertha Strong Cooley was born on July 31, 1862, the fifth of six children of Ellen (Humphrey) and David Almerin Strong, the pastor of the Monument Congregational Church in South Deerfield, Mass., and later state representative for the towns of Deerfield and Whately. Educated in the local public schools, Cooley worked as a teacher in South Carolina and Georgia and, less certainly, as a language teacher at the Deerfield Academy, and during the academic year 1897-1898, she was enrolled as an unclassified student at the University of Chicago.

Cooley’s life took a turn in the years after 1900. A Socialist with a strong social conscience and equally strong opinions, she began publishing short stories, poetry, essays, and letters to the editor in the Springfield newspapers by 1901, and after marrying a Deerfield farmer, Edwin Almerin Cooley (1852-1933) on July 27, 1905, she dramatically expanded the scope of her writing. From the 1920s through 1940s, she was a regular presence in more than a half dozen newspapers, expressing her views on topics ranging from racial justice to Sacco and Vanzetti, the Depression, the failures of Capitalism, world peace, and the promise of Socialism and Communism. Cooley died on July 12, 1950 and is buried in Brookside Cemetery in Deerfield.