Document B.2 · military service card · transcription: verbatim
NJSA Revolutionary War service card — Benjamin Cooper's two one-month tours of 1776 as Captain, 4th Regt. Hunterdon militia, attached to Col. Frelinghuysen's 1st Somerset. Abstracted from Inv. 914.
- repository
- New Jersey State Archives, Trenton
- collection
- Revolutionary War card index — header "C Est'b. Hunterdon | BRM."
- identifier
- Cites Inv. 914 (Jacob Smith) as its source.
What is transcribed: The card, in full.
People named
| As written | Role | Identified as | What this document says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cooper, Benjamin | subject | Benjamin Cooper 1741–1794 | occupation: 1776, Captain, Fourth Regiment, Hunterdon County Militia |
| Colonel (Frederick) Frelinghuysen | official |
What this document records
It abstracts b 2a and nothing else
A CARD IS A FINDING AID, NOT A WITNESS. The five typed cards in this cluster ([B.1], [B.2], [B.3], [B.4], [B.6]) were made by NJSA cataloguers in 1915-1927 and each one abstracts a manuscript that is also in the catalog. They must never be counted as independent corroboration of the documents they summarise. Nine entries; three original sources: Jacob Smith's invalid-pension affidavit (Inv. 914 = [B.2a]), the election certificate (MSS 701 = [B.3a]), and Jesse Hart's two abstracts in Auditor's Book B, pp. 183 and 186 ([B.6a], [B.5]). [B.1] is the one that most looks like a witness and least is — it is a single card summarising all three of those sources at once. This card's single source is [B.2a], and its two entries correspond to that affidavit's two Cooper lines. The card adds the regimental detail the affidavit lacks — "Fourth Regiment, Hunterdon County Militia, attached to Colonel (Frederick) Frelinghuysen's First Regiment, Somerset County Militia" — where Smith's affidavit says only "Capt. Benj. Cooper, and Col. Frelinghuysen." The cataloguer had the full 24-card file; we have four pages.
The service is short and that is the point
Two tours, one month each, September and November 1776. That is what a county militia captaincy looked like — short call-outs, not continuous service — and it is why the later Auditor's Book B entries are payments rather than muster rolls.
The blank fields
EVERY CARD'S "Residence:" AND "Born:" FIELDS ARE BLANK. The archives' own cataloguers could not place or date this Benjamin Cooper beyond the county. So these documents attest a Hunterdon County militia captain named Benjamin Cooper; that he is Benjamin Cooper rests on that person file's independent Lebanon Twp., Hunterdon Co. tax lock, 1778-1790 ([D.455]) — not on anything written here.
Transcription and notes
Provenance, the 2015 order, and the fact that this card abstracts [B.2a] rather than
corroborating it are in the source: and coverage: headers and are not repeated here.
- Data from the card (full transcription):
- Header: "C Est'b. Hunterdon | BRM."
- "NAME: Cooper, Benjamin."
- "Residence: | County: Hunterdon."
- "Born: [blank]."
- "Ref. Inv. 914 (Jacob Smith)."
- Body entry 1 (checkmarked): "Captain, Fourth Regiment, Hunterdon County Militia, attached to Colonel (Frederick) Frelinghuysen's First Regiment, Somerset County Militia, September, 1776, for one month."
- Body entry 2 (checkmarked): "Captain, Fourth Regiment, Hunterdon County Militia, attached to Colonel (Frederick) Frelinghuysen's First Regiment, Somerset County Militia, November, 1776, for one month."