Tuttle Revolutionary Fragments, Morris Co., N.J. — No. 12: Incidents Connected with the Execution of Reynolds Counterfeiting and the Old Boonton Slitting Mill (1850) — primary identification of 'the wife of Robert Gaston, chairman of the committee of vigilance, was the sister of Cooper, one of the four condemned counterfeiters.' = explicit published-secondary primary-source-published-tier identification that Capt. Benjamin Cooper's sister was Mrs. Robert Gaston (= Rosanna Cooper per [A.9](../A-Probate/A.9.yaml) Daniel Sr's 1791 will). Plus narrative: she ran on a hill above Rockaway for hours awaiting reprieve news on the morning of the execution. Plus additional Sheriff Thomas Kinney + execution-day color material.

Transcription and notes

Significance — published-secondary primary-source-tier identification of Mrs. Robert Gaston = Cooper's sister

Tuttle's Fragment No. 12 contains the single most direct published-secondary identification of Capt. Benjamin Cooper's sister married to Robert Gaston. The verbatim sentence:

"The wife of Robert Gaston, chairman of the committee of vigilance, was the sister of Cooper, one of the four condemned counterfeiters."

This consilites with independent Cooper-side attestation at A.9 (Daniel Cooper Sr's 1791 will naming daughter "Rosanna Gaston"). The two independent sources together = certain identification of Rosanna Cooper Gaston as both (a) Capt. Benjamin's sister AND (b) Robert Gaston's wife.

Additionally, this fragment provides unique emotional/biographical narrative of Rosanna's execution-day vigil: she paced "the rise of ground just above where Dr. Jackson of Rockaway now resides" (= specific geographic locator for her c. 1773 residence) for "several hours" awaiting word of reprieve. This is the only known Cooper-line-internal emotional-history detail from the 1773 episode.

Source identification

Verbatim — Mrs. Gaston (Rosanna Cooper Gaston) execution-day narrative

Another incident pertaining to the same transaction is related to me by Mr. Gordon. The wife of Robert Gaston, chairman of the committee of vigilance, was the sister of Cooper, one of the four condemned counterfeiters. On the morning of the execution, the reprieves had not yet reached Morristown, or at least had not been published. Mrs. Gaston of course supposed that her brother would be hanged, and so great was her agitation that she left her house and went on the rise of ground just above where Dr. Jackson of Rockaway now resides, and not far from where the street now runs in front of Fuller & Co's Foundry. She ran backwards and forwards along the hill for several hours, and did not leave it until a dispatch from Morristown gave her word of the reprieve.

It will be interesting to residents in Rockaway thus to associate these old incidents with particular localities in the village.

Verbatim — Sheriff Kinney + execution-day color

In a former fragment, I stated that an nonagenarian friend, Mr. Gordon, was present at the execution of Reynolds for counterfeiting. His uncle, Thomas Kinney, being Sheriff, was in great trepidation, at the business of hanging four men. The scaffold was erected immediately in front of the Court House, and he remembers the ample fixtures for the execution. He says the sentence was passed on the four in the meeting-house, which does not agree with Mr. Whitehead's statement in a paper lately read before the Historical Society.

Mr. Gordon relates a little incident, which occurred just previous to the executions, worthy of a repetition. It seems that a son of the Sheriff, a lad of some ten or twelve years old, and himself, forgetful of the dreadful nature of the business in hand, were indulging themselves in some athletic sport. Mrs. Kinney called her son into the house, and rebuking him for his shameless levity at such a time, severely chastised him. The Sheriff coming up just at that moment, nervous and agitated with the hanging business, seized the boy by the arm, and called out spitefully, "Why don't you put it on him?" His wife very wisely concluded, that however well calculated he might be in that mental agitation to hang four men, he was not at all fitted to advise concerning the whipping of one boy, and she forthwith desisted. As for Mr. Gordon, he thought the Sheriff would be at him next, and he was greatly frightened about it.

Verbatim — alleged secondary counterfeiting den (Tuttle flags as legend)

Mr. Gordon also informs me that it was formerly reported among the inhabitants of this region, that a gang of counterfeiters had an establishment on the west side of the mountain, which is back of the village of Rockaway. A little west of the Swede's Mine is a brook which comes down the valley, entering the canal near to the residence of Mr. Asa Berry. It was reported that on this brook the counterfeiters had a place for the manufacture of spurious coin and bills. A colored man, Thomas Whitehead, who died not long since at the county house, was wont to relate that these men needing the services of a man, employed a colored man. When they had brought him to some point within two or three miles of the place, they blindfolded him, and then took him by a circuitous route among the mountains to the den. He was then taken from it in the same way. The story savors greatly of improbability throughout, and must be considered a legend, which probably owes its birth to the suspicions of the times which had been made more acute by the repeated and often ruinous impositions suffered by the inhabitants from counterfeit money.

Verbatim — Old Boonton slitting mill (non-Cooper but contextual)

(The second half of Fragment 12 narrates the construction of a slitting mill at Old Boonton by Mr. Samuel Ogden of Newark "with the aid of his father," masked as a grist mill to evade Crown restrictions on iron manufacture. Anecdote about the Colonial Governor visiting, being plied with liquors by Ogden, and concluding the report of an illegal mill was groundless. Not directly Cooper-relevant but documents the same Boonton-area iron-industry context Benjamin Cooper operated in via Hibernia, per I.90.)

What this source establishes

• ** Rosanna Cooper Gaston = Mrs. Robert Gaston = sister of "one of the four condemned counterfeiters"** = explicit published-secondary identification (combined with J.131-J.134 the "Cooper" defendant = Capt. Benjamin Cooper Esq.)
• Rosanna's c. 1773 residence was in Rockaway, near a specific hill above what was in 1850 Dr. Jackson's property + near Fuller & Co's Foundry
• Sheriff Thomas Kinney's "great trepidation" + the execution-eve incident with his son
• The four counterfeiters were sentenced "in the meeting-house" per David Gordon's memory (Tuttle flags this as conflicting with Whitehead's published paper)
• Tuttle's skepticism marker — explicitly flags the "secondary counterfeiting den" Whitehead-told story as a "legend ... savoring greatly of improbability" = Tuttle distinguishes traditional knowledge from confirmed fact

What this source does NOT establish

• Rosanna Cooper Gaston's first name (Tuttle gives only "Mrs. Gaston"; first name "Rosanna" comes from A.9)
• Rosanna's birth year or relation order among Daniel Sr's children
• Whether Rosanna had children with Robert Gaston (entirely unaddressed by Tuttle)
• The specific date of the reprieve dispatch reaching Mrs. Gaston (only "morning of the execution"; per J.134 the Governor's pardons were signed 13 December 1773)

Cross-references

• I.87 — Tuttle Fragment No. 8 (1776 Pequannock Whigs petition; Robert Gaston at head of signers list)
• I.88 — Tuttle Fragment No. 9 (Robert Gaston biographical anecdote)
• I.90 — Tuttle Fragment No. 16 (Hibernia counterfeiting + Cooper-Stirling property)
• A.9 — Daniel Cooper Sr's 1791 will naming daughter "Rosanna Gaston" = independent Cooper-side primary-source-published-attestation of the marriage
• J.131 — NY Gazette 30 Aug 1773 sentencing (verbatim newspaper account)
• J.132 — NY Gazette + Weekly Mercury 27 Sep 1773 execution day + Cooper's respite
• J.134 — NY Gazette + Weekly Mercury 13 Dec 1773 Gov. Franklin's pardon
• I.22 Craddock entry 102 — Benjamin Cooper biography
• I.56 Mellick 1889 pp. 574-575 — same trial; silent on Mrs. Gaston / sister-of-Cooper detail
• M.24 Honeyman SCHQ Vol I 1912 — parallel narrative; silent on sister-of-Cooper detail
• M.32 NJ Archives Vol XXIX 1917 — primary-source-published newspaper transcripts
• p.54 Rosanna (Cooper) Gaston — primary subject
• p.55 Robert Gaston — Rosanna's husband
• p.2 Benjamin Cooper — Mrs. Gaston's brother per Tuttle
• p.1 Daniel Cooper Sr — Rosanna's father per A.9

Status notes

• Status [verbatim] — Tuttle's narrative quoted verbatim
• Certainty — high published-secondary on the sister-of-Cooper identification (= consilient with independent A.9 Cooper-side attestation); medium on Tuttle's specific topographic details (= Tuttle was writing 75 years post-event in 1850)