Welcome to the Scottish branch of the Cope family Page.  The surname Cope is a very  old one which is said to have originally been of Saxon origin, and dates back to  before the year 1000 A.D. in Leicestershire, England.  From here the Cope family  seems to have eventually migrated to both Scotland and Ireland.  There also seems to  have been some of the Cope family who remained in the ancestral lands of the  continental Saxons as there are still Copes in Germany, the Netherlands, and  Denmark.

When the new world was discovered, Copes began to make their way to this  new land.  The Cope family also spread to many other countries of the world,  including: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and many others.  In America today,  we find some major branches of the Cope family tree.  This includes our family, which  we call the Scottish Cope Family.  While the the Scottish branch of the Cope Family  issues from William Cope, Sr. of Scotland, there is also the German Cope Branch  issuing from Yost Cope, and the English Cope Branch issuing from Oliver Cope.   Descendants from all three of these families may still be found all over the United  States, Canada, and the Caribbean Islands.

It seems that sometime after 1746, William Cope, Sr. (designated as Sr. only to  differentiate him from his son William, Jr.) who is said to be a Jacobite, was  conscripted into the British Army.  He was then sent to Wurtemberg, Germany, where he  fought in the Seven Years War.  From there he was sent to the New World where he  fought in the French and Indian War.  When that war was concluded, he was rewarded  with a land grant in Green County, in the Colony of New York, along the Hudson River. It was there that he married a Scottish girl named Phoebe Ellsworth sometimes around  1750.  William and Phoebe began their large family there in the Colony of New York.   
      When the American Revolution broke out, William, Sr. and his older sons:  William, Jr.; Henry; and Thomas all fought again for the Crown.  William, Sr. fought  as a Queen's Ranger under Lieut. Allan Mac Nab.  He was assigned to the command  section as a provost guard under Lieut. John Graves Simcoe.  When the war was over,  William, Sr. and his family had their property confiscated, and they fled to Fort  Niagara which was still under British control.  They remained there for ten years as  refugees, before being awarded another land grant and the prestigous title of United  Empire Loyalists by the Crown.

William, Sr. and most of his family then moved to the Dundas Valley in Upper  Canada (about 25 miles west of present day Hamilton), where they helped to establish  a village called Copetown.  Copetown, Ontario,Canada which still exists today,  although the family no longer owns any land there.  This page is an attempt to track  this Scottish branch of the historic Cope family.