Samuel Cooper was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1725. He is a grandson of Samuel Sewall and a graduate of Harvard College. He succeeded his father Rev. William Cooper as minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, where he served from 1745 until his death. An active and influential patriot, it was to Cooper that Benjamin Franklin sent the stolen letters of Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Like his father, he was elected president of Harvard (in 1774) but declined the position. He was also a founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its first president in 1780. Samuel Cooper died in 1783.