COOLEY, ALMON O. [A. O.] (ca. 1828–1899). Almon O. Cooley, Texas legislator, judge, and lawyer, was born around 1828 in Tennessee. He attended college in Tennessee and was admitted to the bar there. Cooley moved to Texas around 1850 at the age of twenty-two and settled in Fredericksburg where he maintained a law practice until his death in 1899.
Cooley served in the Texas House of Representatives during 1857 and 1858. During the Civil Warqv A. O. Cooley was a Unionist but also a Democrat. He was elected to the Texas Senate in 1863 from the Thirty-first District which included his home county of Gillespie. Having never taken an oath against the United States, Cooley continued his political career following the war. He served again in the Texas Senate when it was reconstituted in 1866. Cooley was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875qv where he reportedly showed an interest in frontier defense and the granting of land to citizens above the age of sixteen. He served as a district judge in the Thirty-third District following his attendance at the Constitutional Convention.
A. O. Cooley never married. Almon O. Cooley died on September 26, 1899, and was buried in Fredericksburg's Greenwood Cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Anne Hammons, "West Texas and the State Constitutional Convention of 1875" (MA Thesis, Texas Technological College, 1933).
Jennifer Eckel
