NJ Archives Vol. 40 — the abstract of the will of Joseph Cross of Somerset Co., N.J., made 25 December 1808, proved 17 February 1809, File 1394 R; with the 1809 inventory.

What this document records

Why it matters to a cooper catalog

JOSEPH CROSS IS Mary (Cooper) Cross/Annin POLLY COOPER'S FIRST HUSBAND, and this is the will the catalog had been looking for. Until it was found, her four Cross children rested on the [L.4] hand-drawn tree and [I.23] Craddock alone — both secondary. The abstract names them: John, James, Harriet and Caroline, called "my dear little children."

The will uses both her names

It appoints "Wife, Polly (Mary)" — carrying both forms in one clause. That matches the split the catalog sees everywhere else: her gravestone [G.20] reads Mary, Craddock calls her Polly. ⇒ the two names are one woman, on the document's own authority.

Two coopers appear and neither is identified

A "John G. Cooper" is a co-executor and an "Eliza C. Cooper" a witness — and the abstract identifies neither. The catalog reads John G. as John G Cooper of Basking Ridge (Daniel Sr's grandson via George George Cooper) on geography, and Eliza C. as a candidate for Caty Cooper Dayton Caty, whose name appears elsewhere as Elizabeth Catharine and who was about 25 in 1808. Both are inferences and are argued on those person files, not here. What the document does show, without any identification, is that two Coopers stood around the estate of Polly's children — one trusted with it, one witnessing it.

The other james cross

TWO JAMES CROSSES, AND THEY ARE A GENERATION APART. The executor is "my brother, James Cross" — the James³ whom [I.23] says took in the orphaned children after Polly died in 1817. He is not Polly's son James, born 1802 ([G.233]). The will names both, four words apart.

The pew

The inventory, $2,093.15, includes "½ seat in Baskingridge Meeting House" — which is what places the family, and the milieu the Cross and Cooper households shared.

A one week probate

Will made 25 December 1808; [I.23] gives his death as 10 February 1809; proved 17 February, inventory taken the day after. ⇒ a fast, uncontested probate on a will made six weeks before he died.