In the April 1947 issue of Ebony magazine you will find a very nice photo of downtown Port Byron. It seems an odd place to find such an outstanding photo as Ebony was, and is, a magazine for the African-American market. I would never have seen this photo except that I was researching the main subject of the article; Marcellus Benjamin White.

Much has been written over the years about this very accomplished man. He was a soldier in World War One, a self-made businessman, a community leader, a foster parent to over 21 children, a man who built his own home, and perhaps the first black man to be elected to be a village mayor in New York. He was born in 1900 and died in 1982.

I became interested in Ben when the Lock 52 Historical Society received a post-card collection which contained a well known image of a group of lads standing near the old lock grocery at Lock 52. In it, one boy stands with a bicycle, while another strikes a boxing pose. In between a young black teenager stands staring into the camera. I had heard that was a young Benjamin White. Except on the card in this new collection noted that this lad was a Cooper. It also gave a date of 1907. This started a search.

One of the nice things about searching for someone in a small town is that the entire census takes up about 20 pages. It is easy to leaf through each page searching for someone. Plus I pay for a well known genealogical service which allows for name searching. So I did both. Between the Federal census and the State census, we have a nice snapshot of the population every five years. What I found, or didn’t find, was Benjamin White. What I did find was a family by the name of Cooper. There were two Cooper boys; Albert and Arthur. In 1907, Albert would have been thirteen and Arthur would have been eight. There was also a young girl by the name of Bertha. She would later become the Mrs. Benjamin White, and here we have a connection. Later the two families would next to one another on King Street.

But people are missed in census counts, so I looked for more on Ben. After the death of his brother in Windsor in 1906, the family disappears. Ben later said that he was educated in Ann Arbor, Michigan and graduated school there. The next record of his life is in 1918 when he is inducted into the Army. This shows he was living in Syracuse. In 1918 Ben had married Bertha and the couple had a child Bessie. The only record I could find that might point to Ben in this large time gap is an Ann Arbor, Michigan city directory from 1915. This does show a Marcellus White listed as a black man. There is no other family around. He would have been 15 at the time. I can’t say with great certainly that this was him.

In all the research, many articles cite the Ebony article and the great things it says about Ben. However, no one seems to have sourced a copy. So after some searching, I found a copy in the New York State Library. In a couple days I had a copy and was surprised to find the wonderful image of Port Byron that I mentioned prior. The article notes that Ben came to Port Byron in 1918 so that his family could live with the Coopers.

So who is the young man in the photo? I believe it to be Albert Cooper, who would have been thirteen in 1907. Albert served in WW1 and later became a railroad worker. He was a member of the Legion Post. He died in 1961. I didn’t find much else, although I expect many are still around who might have known him. Digging a bit deeper into the Cooper family, I found that the Cooper family married into the McChesney family. The McChesney’s first appear in the 1855 State census of Mentz, having moved here from the Little Falls area. Two sons, Thomas and Sylvester, are veterans of the Civil War having served in the US Colored Troops. Both are buried in the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery.

In the Ebony article, Ben said; “Race relations in Port Byron are far above reproach; I am proud to call it my home. Indeed, in a world where there is so much prejudice, I have felt very little of it; I sometimes forget that I am a Negro and feel simply a man among men.”

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Ben White is in the middle with the light coat and cap. Bertha, his wife, is to his right (our left). Bessie is in the back row, to the right of her mom. The man to the left (our right) of Ben is Charles Kemp. No one else is named.