Francis Rexford Cooley represents the 22nd General Assembly District of Plainville, which also includes portions of Southington and Farmington. He was elected in November 2022 and will be sworn-in to his first-term in the legislature on January 4, 2023. He will serve on the Environment, Education and Higher Education and Employment committees.
Rep. Cooley was born in Hartford, CT. A graduate of Farmington High School he received his BA from the University of Colorado and received Masters’ Degrees from the University of Maine (History) and University of Hartford (Secondary Education). To pay for his education Francis worked in the restaurant industry, mostly as a professional cook. After teaching history for Newbury College Francis was hired by Paier College of Art in Hamden working there until the college was sold in 2018. Francis taught History and Art History at Paier College of Art for twenty-three years and served as Dean of the College for thirteen, and Head of the General Education Department for fifteen.
Rep. Cooley’s primary areas of scholarship has shifted over the years. Originally focusing on American Foreign Policy (see, “From Isolationism to Interventionism in Maine, 1939-1941,” Maine History, Spring, 1998) then moving to in Gravestone Studies and Material Culture. His most recent article is on the Fenimore Coopers, “William Cooper, James Fenimore Cooper, and Generations of Literary Coopers: A Family’s Literary Legacy Defining and Promoting Cooperstown,” The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal, XXXI/1 Spring, 2020.
He has written a number of encyclopedia entries on a variety of topics including “Censorship” for The Encyclopedia of Military Science and “Comic Strips,” Broadway: An Encyclopedia of Theater and American Culture. He has had work published in a number of publications including The Hartford Courant, Waterbury Republican, and currently writes a column for Plainville’s Hometown Connection and writes book reviews for The Journal of American Culture. A member of the Popular Culture/American Culture Association Mr. Cooley has presented over twenty conference papers featuring his photography of gravestones. Additionally, Mr. Cooley has worked as his own photographer on stories published in a variety of publications and has seen some eighty of his photos published. A number of his photographs have been exhibited as part of group shows for the last twenty years in addition to four solo shows.
Cooley was elected to the Plainville Library Board of Trustees in 2019 and has also served on the Board of Directors of the American Clock and Watch Museum from 2019 to 2022.