David Coopwood, (1832 - 1865) younger brother of Bethel Coopwood, one of the men wounded in the shootout at the end of the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair. In June 1865 he was killed by troops of Mexican General Juan Cortina in the Bell incident on the Rio Grande in south Texas.
David Coopwood was born in 1832, in Lawrence County, Alabama. He was the son of David E. Coopwood, an early settler, planter and slave holder in that county.
By 1852 David Coopwood had moved to Texas, where his brother Bethel had moved in 1846 and where by 1850 his brother Benjamin had settled in Tyler County, Texas.[1] There David Coopwood married Mary J. Green on August 19, 1852 in Tyler County, but she passed away in 1853.[2] [3] [4] Soon after he married Martha L. Nowlin, also in Tyler County, Texas, on November 24, 1853.[5]
By 1855, David Coopwood and his family were living in California where all his children were born. The 1860 census shows he, his wife and three children were living in the San Salvador Township of San Bernardino County. He may have come like several Texans with his family to San Salvador Township from El Monte (where his two brothers also lived), in 1857, purchasing the land during the Mormon exodus from San Bernardino County during the Utah War, like his brothers Benjamin and Bethel.
In September 1859, two San Bernardino doctors began a quarrel that escalated into violence. Bethel Coopwood became embroiled in the Ainsworth - Gentry Affair, by protecting Doctor Ainsworth, from the threatened violence of an anti-Mormon faction of armed men supporting Doctor Gentry in his quarrel with Ainsworth. Bethel sheltered Ainsworth at his adobe house with the aid of some friends and relatives including David. That night, the Gentry faction organized themselves across from the house that sat amidst a fenced cornfield. The defenders quietly arranged themselves along the fence facing them. When the anti-Mormon began their advance they heard the defenders making ready to shoot and withdrew in haste.
However on the following day, a gunfight in the streets of the town, at the end of the affair, on the Ainsworth side, David Coopwood, was wounded in the arm, the ball passing through to the shoulder blade; Bethel Coopwood, was wounded in the leg, wrist and mouth; Mat Welsh, received a slight wound. On the Gentry side, Frank Green of El Monte, was wounded in the back after a hand to hand struggle with Taney Woodward, Bethel's brother-in-law,(both armed and firing handguns).[6]: 2 [7]: 1, col.2 [8], : 95–96
On June 25, 1865, while traveling down river from Reynosa to Matamoros with his brother Bethel Coopwood, on the steamboat Bell, with a load of cotton:
Subsequently Bethel Coopwood, who survived the attack, made a claim for restitution against Mexico for himself and the widow and children of his brother David Coopwood, who he claimed was killed on board the Bell, by fire from the troops of General Cortina on the Mexican shore of the Rio Grande. However it was disallowed by the Joint Commission, of American claims against Mexico in 1877.[10]