Notice of a Union veterans' mass meeting held at St. John, Stafford County, Kansas, 28 February 1890, to petition Congress for a service pension - The Stafford County Herald, Stafford, Stafford County, Kansas, Wednesday 12 March 1890, page 1.

What this document records

The notice verbatim

"NOTICE. St. John, Kansas, Feb. 28, 1890. Persuant to a call made for the comrads of > Stafford county, Kansas, to meet for the purpose of taking some steps toward securing a > service pension. > The house was called to order and J. C. Tousley was called to the chair, and J. W. Alford was > chosen secretary. > On motion the Chair appointed a committee consisting of three, on resolutions viz: Gen. > Joseph Cooper, Thomas Hadsel and Wm. Patterson. > Motion - The report of committee be read and recieved. > I herewith copy report of the committee as read, which was read and adopted: "To the Kansas > delegation in congress: Your petitioners, whose names are hereto appended and who were present > and participated in a mass meeting of old soldiers and citizens, at St. John, Kansas, on Feb. > 28, 1890. Knowing that the time has fully arrived when the survivors of the Union army and > navy should receive a service pension; and further believing that it is morally right, > eternally just and emminently political, that senate bill no. 1094 should become a law. > Therefore we do most earnestly and respectfully entreat and demand that you do all in your > power to aid in the accomplishment of the same > Names of committee: Gen. J. A. Cooper, William Patterson, Thomas Hadsel. > Motion - That a number of copies of the committee report be struck and circulated for > subscribers..." (Spellings "Persuant", "comrads", "recieved" and "emminently" are the paper's own.)

Why this entry exists at all

IT IS NOT ABOUT Joseph Cooper JOSEPH COOPER. IT IS THE PROOF THAT SOMEONE ELSE OF THAT NAME WAS LIVING IN THE SAME COUNTY AT THE SAME TIME. The entry is kept for the disambiguation, not for the meeting. The body of the notice says "Gen. Joseph Cooper"; the committee list at the foot of the same notice says "Gen. J. A. Cooper". Same man, same notice, two stylings - and the second gives the middle initial. So Stafford County in 1890 held a Joseph A. Cooper, styled General, prominent enough to be named to the resolutions committee of a county-wide Union veterans' meeting. He is catalogued as Joseph Alexander Cooper.

And this is not our joseph

IDENTIFIED AND UPGRADED TO certain THE SAME DAY - see [G.704]. He is Brig. Gen. Joseph Alexander Cooper, 25 Nov 1823 - 20 May 1910, born Whitley Co., Kentucky, died in Stafford County, Kansas, buried Knoxville National Cemetery. Joseph Cooper was born in New Jersey about 1811-1817 and died at Stafford in October 1893, buried in Stafford Cemetery ([G.543], [J.262]). Birth year, birthplace, death date and burial all differ. Two men. AND THE ARGUMENT FIRST GIVEN HERE WAS WRONG. This field originally read: "Joseph Cooper Joseph Cooper is a farmer ([D.612] 1880, [D.613] 1885 both call him one) ... A man carrying the title General in his county's own newspaper is not someone the surrounding records would describe as a farmer and leave unremarked." The general's own memorial biography says he moved "to Kansas to engage in farming." => occupation does not separate these two men at all, and the first day's reasoning reached a right answer by a route that does not hold. Kept visible rather than overwritten, because the tempting argument is the one worth warning about. What does separate them in THIS document is only the styling - Gen. here, Mr. in [J.585] - which is a weak signal on its own. The dates in [G.704] are what settle it.

What it costs the catalog

[J.585]'s identification rested on a premise this page falsifies. That entry grades the hundred-dollar salt-works pledge as Joseph Cooper's at probable, and says so in as many words: "the identification rests on his being the only one the catalog places at Stafford in 1888." He was not the only one. See [J.585]'s own THE_PREMISE_WAS_WRONG field, added the same day, and Joseph Alexander Cooper.

The holdings question this answers in passing

[J.585] todo t2 asked for a search of the Alliance Herald, 1890-1892, as three unsearched years of Stafford local news. That search was run on 2026-10-27 and this page is what it returned. Parameters: newspapers.com, exact phrase "Joseph Cooper", Kansas, 1890-1892 - 146 matches in the state, 23 in Stafford County, of which 21 are in the St. John papers (The St. John News, The Advance) and only 2 are printed at Stafford: this one and a Stafford County Republican of 6 March 1890 carrying the same meeting. No Alliance Herald match appeared at all. => the twenty-one St. John hits are the overwhelming likelihood to be Joseph Alexander Cooper the general, whose county seat that was, and that is the finding: the run nobody had searched turns out to be full of the wrong Joseph Cooper.