He was one of four children and in 1875 the family moved to Newcastle, Indiana after William Cotteral was elected county auditor.

Together, they decided to join the 1889 Land Run in the newly-created Oklahoma Territory, which had just opened the Cherokee Strip for settlement by white settlers.

[2] The Bierer-Cotteral partnership effectively ended when President Grover Cleveland named Bierer as an Associate Justice on the Oklahoma Territory Supreme Court in 1896.

[2] Cotteral was nominated by President Calvin Coolidge on May 19, 1928, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated by Judge Walter Henry Sanborn.

Cotteral was reassigned by operation of law to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on March 28, 1929, to a new seat authorized by 45 Stat.