Nestled beneath towering trees dressed in autumn color, the grave of James Fenimore Cooper — one of America's first great novelists and creator of The Last of the Mohicans — rests beneath a simple stone sarcophagus adorned with a cross, surrounded by an iron fence and the quiet dignity of a small cemetery in Cooperstown, New York. Cooper died in 1851 and was interred in the cemetery of Christ Church, the Episcopal parish his family helped establish in the village his father William founded. For generations of literary pilgrims, this grave was a destination as meaningful as any battlefield monument — a site of homage to the man who first put the American frontier into prose. This vivid linen-era postcard, published by Chas. W. Hughes of Mechanicville, NY, captures the scene in warm autumn tones and would have been a staple of the local souvenir trade in the 1930s and 1940s, when Cooperstown drew visitors for both Cooper's legacy and the newly enshrined Baseball Hall of Fame.