Walter Cooper
Walter Cooper was born on July 4, 1843 at Sterling, Cayuga County, New York, the son of Andrew Cooper and Sarah McGilvra. His father died of pneumonia after a boat accident, when Walter was eight. Sent to live with an aunt in Lansing, Michigan, his adventurous spirit led him to go west and in 1858 he reached Leavenworth, Kansas, where supposedly he met Jim Bridger. The following year saw Walter Cooper travel to Pikes Peak; in 1860 he joined a prospecting expedition to the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado, where legend has it that he visited “Kit” Carson. Two years later, he came to Colorado Springs, where he worked as a scout for the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers. In November 1863, he headed north to the Montana Territory, arriving in Virginia City in February 1864. After several years of mining and moving freight by steamboat, Walter Cooper settled in Bozeman in 1868 and established his armory and gun manufactory. His occupation in 1870 in Bozeman, Gallatin County was listed as gunsmith. (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gold and Guns: The 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition and the Battle of Lodge Grass Creek)
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Kurt Franz
Kurt Franz, SS-Untersturmführer, born January 17, 1914 in Düsseldorf, Kommandant of Treblinka death camp, participant in Nazi T4 (Tiergarten 4) pre-war euthanasia program, winner of the Iron Cross 2nd Class, after the war lived in Düsseldorf as a construction worker until 1959, arrested and sentenced to Life Imprisonment in 1965 for the killing of 139 victims and for complicity in the murder of 300,000 others, released in 1993, died July 4, 1998 in Wuppertal, said of himself: “I never killed a person or beat anyone.” (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich)