The Coopers of Long Hill

Document J.153 · Newspaper / Misc · transcription: desc

1816 'A Citizen' account of New Brunswick's earliest settlement, quoting Daniel Cooper of Long Hill (near 100 yrs old) as 'one of the first settlers… resided at the ferry, and he and his sister used to row the passengers across the river.' Surfaced via a 2025 Facebook post (Rick Remlinger); the original 1816 publication is not yet located. Strongly = our [p.1 Daniel Cooper Sr](../../people/p.1%20Daniel%20Cooper%201695-1795.md) by his own recollection — bears directly on the New-Brunswick/Inian's-Ferry origins question (pr.2/pr.7).

Transcription and notes

Provenance / caveat

Surfaced 2026-06-02 by the maintainer from a Facebook post by Rick Remlinger, dated 21 August 2025 ("Rick Remlinger's Post," admin of a New Brunswick local-history page), captioned "At one time We were Prigmores Swamp… Daniel Cooper age 100, shared memories before we were New Brunswick, recalled in 1816." Remlinger quotes (in brackets) what reads as an 1816 newspaper letter signed "A Citizen." The original 1816 publication has NOT been located — treat the text below as relayed verbatim (transcription-of-a-transcription), not a primary artifact in hand. Low provenance confidence per maintainer.

Text as relayed (the bracketed "A Citizen" letter)

[As I was passing the streets of this city one evening not long since, hearing a great number of frogs croaking, as I passed by several ponds of stagnant water, it brought to my recollection the account given me several years since Mr. Daniel Cooper of Longhill respecting this place. The good old gentleman, who was then near 100 years of age, informed me that he was one of the first settlers of New Brunswick, that when he first came here there were not more than 5 or 6 houses in the place; he resided at the ferry, and he and his sister used to row the passengers across the river; the land along the Rar[i]tan for a considerable distance on the west side was owned by [on — sic] Jon Prigmore and the part on which Brunswick now stands he gave to his daughter Ann; the people of Piscataway were in the practice of driving their cattle across the river to pasture in Ann Prigmore's Swamp, as it was then called.

I was much gratified to hear an account thus given of the first settlement of my native place… [civic complaint about stagnant frog-ponds + hope they will be drained] … and no longer remind us of Ann Prigmore's swamp.

A Citizen]

recalled in 1816

(Accompanying image in the post: a comic "NEW BRUNSWICK" frog poster, "Leave Ann Prigmore's Swamp Alone! It's my home" — a modern local-history meme, not a source element.)

2026-06-02 UPDATE — the Elizabethtown Bill (K.45) recasts this as a CONFLATION

The 1747 Elizabethtown Bill in Chancery (now cataloged at K.45) shows the documented "Daniel Cooper, 2,000 acres on the Passaic" was our Daniel Sr holding Lot No. 2 (~500 ac) of Robert Barclay's tract, acquired 1733–35 jointly with / then from Reynier Runyon — Long Hill, 1730s, not a pre-1697 New Brunswick founder. The "first settler of New Brunswick" strand (Gordon / Barber / Clayton / Wiley I.137) is therefore a conflation — Barclay's 1687 dates + 2,000-acre tract + a town-founding legend, stacked onto the documented Daniel-Sr-on-the-Passaic.

This walks back the "possible ancestor-founder" reading in the sections below. The documentary record points to our own Daniel Sr, not a New-Brunswick-founding ancestor. The 1816 "A Citizen" claim is then best read as the same conflation (or a centenarian's inflated recollection), not independent origins evidence. Kept as a documented instance of the conflation / useful color — not support for a New-Brunswick origin. (Sections below predate this and are left for the record.)

Further: the dedicated founding study — I.153 (Benedict 1912) — names the first settlers as Drake/Greenland/Longfield/Inian/Pridmore and credits the ferry to John Inian (life-grant to Inian + wife, 5 Feb 1697). It contains no Daniel Cooper at all, so it doesn't support a Cooper first-settler/ferryman in any form.

Why this matters

The "Daniel Cooper of Longhill, near 100 years of age" is, with high confidence, our p.1 Daniel Cooper Sr — "of Long Hill" + "near 100" matches p.1 exactly (d. 1795 aged 100; the conversation, "given me several years since," dates to ~1790–95). This is the first source we have in which the New-Brunswick-first-settler tradition is attached, first-hand, to our Daniel Sr himself, in his own words.

It directly engages a question already open in the catalog (pr.7 + pr.2):

The chronological tension (flagged, NOT resolved)

A pre-1681 ferry-founder cannot be Daniel Sr (b. 1695). Yet the 1816 account has Daniel Sr saying he resided at the ferry and rowed passengers when there were "5 or 6 houses." Three readings, none yet provable:

  1. Daniel Sr personally lived at Inian's Ferry as a young man (~1715–1730, when New Brunswick was still a tiny hamlet) and rowed the ferry before removing to Long Hill — a genuine early-life datum; the "first settler / pre-1681" gloss is a centenarian's (and later retellers') compression. (Fits the catalog residence trail: Piscataway/New-Brunswick vicinity early → Morris Co. later. Piscataway is directly across the Raritan.)
  2. A founding Daniel Cooper (the pre-1681 first-inhabitant/ferryman of Barber/Gordon) was Daniel Sr's ancestor, and Daniel Sr inherited/blended the family tradition with his own early ferry residence — which would make that founding Daniel a candidate answer to the pr.2 origins question (New Brunswick origin, vs the Holland / Long Island / Camden hypotheses).
  3. Conflation of two same-named Coopers across a century of retelling.

The honest position: J.153 strengthens a New-Brunswick/Inian's-Ferry origin for the Cooper family and ties our Daniel Sr to it by his own testimony, but the founder-vs-Daniel-Sr chronology stays open.

New biographical detail for p.1 (if accepted, tradition-tier)

2026-07-18 — the "he and his sister rowed the ferry" detail traced through Jenkins → Monnette; still hunting the 1816 reprint

Prompted by the maintainer noticing Jenkins's ([I.192]) ferry line, the provenance was worked: - The "first inhabitant Daniel Cooper kept a ferry" claim is genuine gazetteer tradition (Gordon 1834 / Barber 1846), relayed by Monnette p. 361 and copied from Monnette by Jenkins ([I.192]) — who inherited Monnette's bogus attribution to Benedict 1912 (which has no Cooper, [I.153]). So the "author made it up" reading is wrong: the claim is real, the citation is a Monnette error Jenkins amplified. - But the distinctive "and his sister rowed the passengers" detail is NOT in the standard histories. A "his sister" search of Barber 1846, Gordon 1834, and Wall & Pickersgill History of Middlesex County 1921 (all on disk) = 0 hits in all three (2026-07-18). ⇒ the sister/ferry-rowing detail survives only in this 1816 "A Citizen" account — it is the account's signature, and it is what makes this source uniquely valuable (it's the only text co-placing Daniel + a sister as children ~1710). - ⇒ Where the 1816 reprint likely sits (the sources still to follow): 1. Monnette book p. 362 — the continuation of "Beginnings of New Brunswick" (p. 361 sets it up and cuts off mid-sentence; Monnette routinely quotes primary accounts). The full Monnette PDF the maintainer downloaded 2026-07-18 is (image held in the family archive) = the LATER VOLUME (PDF p. = book p. − 845; it runs book pp. ~846–1617), so it does NOT contain p. 361–362 — and a full-text search of it for "his sister" / "row the passengers" = null. ⇒ book p. 362 must come from Monnette's earlier part. Update 2026-07-18: the maintainer then added Parts 4 & 5 ((image held in the family archive)) = book pp. ~376–927 (PDF p. = book p. − 375) — which overshoots p. 362 by 14 pages; "his sister" / "row the passengers" null there too. Also checked Monnette's own COOPER family entry (book p. 595, IN Parts 4-5 = (image held in the family archive)): it is our Daniel Sr ("Old Daniel Cooper, first at Piscataway… born at sea May 1, 1695… m. Grace Runyon 1726… sister Anne m. [Isaac] Van Court… six wives," cited to Littell p.90 + "Jer. Gen. No. 2716, 1909") — but it carries NO ferry and NO sister-rowing detail. ⇒ within Monnette the story exists only in the "Beginnings of New Brunswick" section, book pp. 361–362 = Monnette PARTS 1–3 (pp. 1–375) — still the one part not in hand (the maintainer has the Page 361 PNG from it). Pull Page 362 (+363) from Parts 1–3. (Aside: Monnette's "Isaac Van Court, Sr." for Anne's husband vs the catalog's Elias ([p.25]/[A.12]) — a Monnette name-slip to note, not resolve here.) - Acquisition of Monnette book p.362 is HARD (2026-07-18): Internet Archive has only Parts 6–7 (firstsettlersofy67monn); HathiTrust (Record 102006954) has the other volumes but view-only (not downloadable) AND mis-labeled (its "v.2" scan = Part 7/index); Volume 3 is on FamilySearch only (catalog 253883, sign-in). Book p.362 is in Monnette Parts 1–3 (pp.1–375) — most likely Vol 3 (FamilySearch). The maintainer holds the Page 361 PNG (scanned 2007), so their 2007 source may be the easiest re-pull. - AND it may be a dead end even if pulled: p.361 cuts off mid-quote of Benedict's first-settlers list ("…citizens of Piscatawaytown, and ap[pear]…"), NOT mid-1816-account — so p.362 may simply continue the Benedict/first-settler discussion and need not contain the "sister" detail at all. ⇒ Jenkins's sister-sentence source remains unconfirmed (Monnette p.362, or the 1816 account via another reprint, or Jenkins's own conflation). Provenance is essentially resolved (ferry passage = copied from Monnette p.361; sister detail = the real 1816 tradition); pinning the exact reprint of the sister clause is a low-value tail-chase given the ferry story is itself a [K.45] conflation. Recommend: bank as-is unless Vol 3 is pulled opportunistically. 2. Benedict, New Brunswick in History (1925) — Monnette's actual cited Benedict work ("BENED. PART ONE, p. 27, 1925"), distinct from the 1912 First Settlers paper we hold ([I.153]). Not on disk. Acquire (archive.org / HathiTrust likely).

Follow-ups (track down the origin — maintainer's ask)

Cross-references