New Jersey Herald (Newton, Sussex Co., N.J.), Wednesday 8 March 1882, page 3, last column - "COMMISSIONERS' SALE!", the Great Meadows drainage commissioners' advertisement of a public vendue at the Clarendon House, Hackettstown, 26 April 1882, of 128 numbered tracts in Sussex and Warren counties sold for non-payment of drainage assessments; dated 16 February 1882 and signed by Amos Hoagland, James Boyd and William L. Johnson, Commissioners.

What this document records

The heading and preamble verbatim

"COMMISSIONERS' SALE! The undersigned, Commissioners appointed by the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey, to carry out a system of drainage adopted for draining the Great Meadows, in the counties of Sussex and Warren, will sell at public vendue at the Clarendon House, in the town of Hackettstown, in the county of Warren, on WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26th, 1882, between the hours of 12 and 5 o'clock, in the afternoon of said day, (and at the same time and place on the following days if the said sale shall not be completed on said day) for non payment of assessments, the lots or tracts of land and premises hereinafter mentioned, as numbered on the assessment and map of said drainage filed in the office of the Clerk of the Supreme Court aforesaid, for the least number of years that any person will take the same and pay the assessment thereon with interest from the 26th day of August, A. D. 1881, and the costs and expenses of sale." Column head over the figures: "Assessment".

The roderick b cooper entry verbatim

Read at 4x, the whole two-line entry: " 78 - 11 60-100 acres, assessed to Roderick B. Cooper......... 246 96" => 11.60 acres, assessment $246.96, tract number 78 on the drainage map filed with the Clerk of the Supreme Court. The entries either side, read in the same crop, for context and to show the row was not mis-attached: 77 - 5 acres, Samuel Harden, 133 06 - 78 - Roderick B. Cooper - 79 - 5 acres, Jesse Adams, 95 81. The list then jumps 79 to 82 (no 80 or 81 printed).

The signatures and the extent of the list verbatim

Foot of the notice, read at 4x: "AMOS HOAGLAND, JAMES BOYD, WILLIAM L. JOHNSON, } Commissioners. Dated February 16, 1882." with the printer's key 2724-9t (nine insertions), which matches the weekly repetition observed 8 March - 17 May 1882. The list runs from Tract No. 1 (91 40-100 acres, Jehiel G. Shipman, J. N. Wickoff and others, $2,724.27) to Tract No. 128 (32 14-100 acres, Eliza B. Lewis, $68.53).

What it establishes and what it does not

It is a landholding record, not a vital record. It places a Roderick B. Cooper as the assessed owner of a Great Meadows tract in Warren/Sussex at the August 1881 assessment date, and records that the assessment went unpaid into 1882. The identification with Roderick Byanton Cooper is not asserted here - the notice gives no residence, age or relationship. It is argued on his own file: he is the only Roderick B. Cooper this catalog knows, he was enumerated at Allamuchy in 1880 ([D.392]), and the Great Meadows lie in Independence and Allamuchy townships, where his father John Cooper held land ([K.56]) and died ([F.278], place of death "Settlement", place of birth "Meddows"). What the unpaid assessment means is NOT interpreted here. A drainage assessment going to sale can mean insolvency, absence, a disputed assessment, or simply a tract not worth the levy; the notice says only that it was unpaid.