Hunterdon Co. Orphans' Court, 4 August 1796 — the order allowing John H. Cooper's administration account on the estate of Benjamin Cooper. Minutes p. 149.

What this document records

🔴 the surrogate searched these volumes and reported a null - this page is why that matters

ON 2026-09-29 THE HUNTERDON COUNTY SURROGATE REPLIED TO THE CATALOG'S SEARCH REQUEST: “We have searched our docket and found no record of the [Estate of Benjamin Cooper] in Hunterdon County. Our search was from General index C-D of 1804-1965 and Minutes of Orphan Court Volume 1, 2, & 3.” THIS ENTRY IS IN ONE OF THOSE VOLUMES. The viewer's breadcrumb names it “Hunterdon › Orphans' Court minutes 1785-1806, vol 1-2”, and the page is 149. AND THE EXPLANATION IS ON THE PAGE, WHICH MAKES THIS A CORRECTION RATHER THAN A COMPLAINT. Benjamin Cooper's name does NOT appear as a marginal heading or as a docketed item. It sits inside a run-on narrative paragraph that disposes of EIGHT fiduciaries at once — Fleming, Cooper, Biggs, Harsall, Rowzer, Emmans, Harris and Tomlinson — in a single sentence. ⇒ A search of the DOCKET, or of any name index built from headings, cannot see it. The Surrogate's answer says “we have searched our docket”, and that is very likely exactly what happened. AND THE SAME PARAGRAPH ENDS WITH A GUARDIANSHIP — “and Luther Opdycke, Guardian of Dinah Tomlinson”. That is the proof that guardianship business appears in these minutes in this same invisible form, which is decisive for the request that produced the null: the catalog asked for a guardianship of Benjamin Cooper's minor children, 1795-1805. One further scoping point the reply itself supplies: the General Index C-D runs 1804-1965, so it cannot reach 1795-1803 at all — most of the window asked about.

🚨 withdrawn 2026-09-30 - the index argument below does not stand

The key that follows was written on 2026-09-29 and is WITHDRAWN the next day. It claimed the index at images ~115-148 is volume 1's own and that its omission of page 149 proved the clerk's own index missed this entry. That was an inference from reel position, not a reading. Volume 1 reaches only about page 184, while that index cites pages up to 262 — so it is most likely VOLUME 2's index, bound at the front of volume 2. See [A.113a] for the arithmetic and for the test that will settle it. THE DOCKET-INVISIBILITY ARGUMENT IN THE KEY ABOVE IS UNTOUCHED — it rests on the shape of THIS page, read from the plate: no marginal heading, eight fiduciaries in one run-on sentence. CONFIRMED 2026-09-30: the test was run — the index's “Case Hannah, minor 220” is Hannah Case's guardianship at volume 2 p.221, image 266. So the index is volume 2's, certainly, and its Cooper null is a null for 1798-1806 rather than anything about this page.

🗑 withdrawn the volumes own index omits this page too

2026-09-29. Volume 1 carries its own thumb-tabbed manuscript index at images ~115-148 of the same reel — a section the viewer title does not disclose. The C page is image 118, and it is now [A.113a]. There is no Cooper on it. The C surnames actually entered are Case, Cole, Cook, Craig, Crawford, Creamer, Cramer, Chamberlin, Cheston, Calvin, Carmon/Carman, Carhart, Cain, Cox and Cornish. And the page-number sequence steps straight over 149 — the left column runs “Creamer Catharine 115 / Carmon Hyam[?] 150”, and THIS ENTRY IS ON 149. That is a second, independent confirmation of the reason given above, and a stronger one: it is not only the modern General Index (which starts in 1804) that cannot reach this entry — the clerk who kept the book indexed from the marginal headings, so his own contemporary index missed it as well.

🎯 the reel carries the offices own notice pointing at an index that starts in 1804

2026-09-30 — [A.113b]. Image 114 of the same reel is a card pasted and filmed by the Hunterdon Surrogate's Office on 19 November 1969, reading in full: “ALL RECORDS FOR ALL ESTATES ARE INDEXED IN THE GENERAL INDEX OF THE SURROGATES OFFICE”. That is precisely the finding aid the 2026 reply names — “General index C-D of 1804-1965”. This entry is dated 4 August 1796. ⇒ The index the office's own card sends a searcher to begins eight years after this record exists. This is what turns the follow-up from a correction into an explanation: the office used the finding aid its own notice names, and that finding aid does not cover 1785-1803. No claim is made that the office misdescribed its records — only that a 1804-1965 index cannot reach 1796.

✅✅ the whole reel is now read and holds exactly one cooper - this one

2026-09-30 — volume 2 was paged to the end. Images 149-293, February Term 1798 through August Term 1806, book pages 1 to 257. With volume 1 already read, the entire reel has now been read. The only Cooper on it is this entry. And the null is a real one, not an absence of the record type. Guardianship is the commonest business in volume 2, in exactly the form a child of Benjamin Cooper would have used: minors “14 & upwards” petitioning and choosing their own guardian — Hannah Case, James Best, Rosetta Drake, Charles Mattison, Rebecca Gray, Frances Kline. A child of Benjamin born in the 1780s reaches 14 between 1798 and 1806, squarely inside that volume. AND THE GAP IS CLOSED, later the same day. Image 229 is a blank opening (transcript = the page numbers “48 189”) and image 290 is a leaf of personal writing in another hand, not a minute. All 293 images have now been viewed, and the reel holds exactly one Cooper: this one.

📖 volume 1 is now read end to end and holds exactly one cooper

2026-09-30 — images 101-114, the last unread stretch, were read. 101-105 are a long land-division survey (pp. ~158-166; 102 and 103 are a duplicate pair), 106 is blank, 107 is p.168 August Term 1797, 109 is p.172 October Term 1797 — where volume 1 ends — and 110-114 are the film's target cards. No Cooper on any of them. Volume 1's last page is 172, which also settles [A.113a]: a book citing pages up to 262 was never volume 1's.

📖 the minutes were then paged by hand and there is no cooper guardianship

2026-09-29 — the catalog performed the search itself. Volume 1 images 78-100 were read continuously (October Term 1793 through May Term 1797) and volume 2 images 149-195 (February Term 1798 through October Term 1801), via the reel's full-text view, each page searched for Cooper, guardian and Benjamin. Across every term in both runs the only Cooper is this entry. Guardianship grants are routine there — at least a dozen in the stretch read — so the null is a real null, not an absence of the record type. Still unread: 1802-1805 (images ~196-240) and the volume-1 tail (images 101-114, largely land-division surveys). See [pr.86].

It is the approval already on a4

THIS IS THE COURT'S SIDE OF A DOCUMENT THE CATALOG ALREADY HELD. The minute is the "We Allow the within Account — Aug 4th 1796" approval that appears on the cover of [A.4], Benjamin's Final Account of Administration — same date, same reviewing judges. Worth having as the court's own record, but not a new document.

The null is the real finding

A BARE-KEYWORD FULL-TEXT SWEEP OF THE WHOLE 293-IMAGE FILM RETURNED THIS AND NOTHING ELSE. q.text=Cooper + q.groupName=005661195, no name and no year. ⇒ there is no Cooper guardianship, wardship or distribution anywhere in the Hunterdon Orphans' Court minutes 1785-1806 — only Benjamin's account confirmation. And it upgrades an earlier null. [pr.17] had an index-only null here — and the index had missed even this record. An index null is not a full-text null, which is the whole point of [[feedback_familysearch_fulltext_workflow]].

Why the null is not a surprise

It is over-determined: Benjamin's widow Anna survived him, and his estate was insolvent — neither condition produces a guardianship. ⇒ the Orphans'-Court route to naming Benjamin's children is exhausted, and this entry is what closes it.