Crawford Co., Ohio, Deed Book 4, page 40 — Israel and Samuel Cooper of the County of Crawford and State of Ohio to David Sockrider, mortgage deed on the west half of the south east quarter of Section 12, T1S R14, 80 acres, for $300, executed 8 June 1835, filed 9 June and recorded 16 June 1835; FamilySearch DGS 8193809 image 331.

What this document records

✅✅ all three registers pass the clerks practice control

CONTROL COMPLETED 2026-09-27, ACROSS ALL FIVE REGISTERS IN WHICH ANY COOPER SUBSCRIPTION OF THIS FAMILY APPEARS — AND THIS DEED SUPPLIES THE BEST CONTROL OF THE THREE, BECAUSE IT IS INTERNAL. The doubt being tested: this file already records "Israel was illiterate; this Samuel could write his name", graded probable on the reasoning that "what carries weight is the asymmetry of the annotation, which a copying clerk had no reason to invent." That is an argument from the clerk's MOTIVE. It can be replaced by an empirical control: does this register in fact distinguish? | register | control, all crop-verified | |---|---| | Warren Co., NJ (DGS 8355702) | [K.87] — Henry Parker signs · Charlotte her X mark Parker marks · Susannah Parker signs, three grantors in one block (2×) | | Crawford Co., OH (DGS 8193809) | [K.105] — Israel his X mark Cooper marks and Samuel Cooper signs in the same block; facing deed Jacob Rambo signs vs Elizabeth her X mark Rambo (3×) | | Wyandot Co., OH (DGS 7209594) | [K.100] — Elijah W Berry signs vs Polly + mark Berry marks; plus this deed's Israel his X mark Cooper (3×) | | Wyandot Co., OH (DGS 7209601) | [K.101] — Ebenezer Baughman signs vs Mary her + mark Baughman marks; plus Samuel Cooper signs (3×) | | Wyandot Co., OH, Deeds 1845-1847 | [K.98] — Robert Gier signs at the head of page 36 and Israel his X mark Cooper marks lower on THE SAME PAGE (3×); page 37 adds Joseph McCutchen and Letitia McCutchen both signing | ⇒ ALL FIVE PASS. Every register that carries a Cooper subscription in this argument demonstrably renders a mark as a mark and a signature as a name, and two of the three do it within a single subscription block. ⇒ So the asymmetry no longer rests on the clerk's motive; it rests on the clerk's demonstrated practice. The ASYMMETRY may accordingly be graded certain — the New Jersey Israel of January 1835 signed and the Ohio Israel of June 1835 marked, and both readings are controlled. What is NOT thereby graded certain is the IDENTIFICATION. That two men are involved is an inference from the asymmetry, however well controlled, and the decision to split the deed rows is the maintainer's — see Israel Cooper. AND THE OPEN ITEM IS NOW CLOSED. Samuel Cooper's item asked for the execution lines of [K.98], [K.97], [K.100], [K.101] and [K.104] to be re-read, "several of which were read at 2× or less because their signature blocks were never the point." All five have now been read at 3× and every one of their registers is controlled — [K.97] and [K.104] carry no Cooper subscription (the Coopers are grantees there) but share registers with [K.98] and [K.101] respectively.

The marginal caption verbatim

Crop-verified at ~2.4×: Israel & Samuel Cooper / Mortgage Deed to / David Sockrider — "Filed for record 4 Oclock P.M. on the 9th. Recorded on the 16th day of June A.D. 1835 by Z. Row[se], Recorder, Crawford County Ohio." The recorder's surname read at ~0.9× only; [K.96] renders the same man Z. Rowse.

The granting clause verbatim

"This indenture made this 8th day of June A.D. 1835 between Israel and Samuel Cooper of the County of Crawford and State of Ohio of the one part and David Sockrider of the County and State aforesaid of the other part witnesseth that the said Israel & Samuel Cooper for and in consideration of the sum of three hundred dollars to them in hand paid by the said David Sockrider the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged hath granted bargained sold and by these presents doth grant bargain sell alien confirm unto the said David Sockrider and to his heirs and assigns forever all that tract or parcel of land situate in the County aforesaid to wit the west half of the South east quarter of section twelve in Township one South of Range fourteen in the District of Lands offered for sale in Tiffin Ohio containing eighty acres…" "…executed in presence of Jonathan Kear / Caroline Kear", and acknowledged before Jonathan Kear, Justice of the Peace, the 8th day of June A.D. 1835.

The fact this supplies that k96 explicitly lacked

THE POINT OF THIS ENTRY. [K.96] records, in terms, that the purchase deed "gives NO residence for either grantee." This one does: "Israel and Samuel Cooper OF THE COUNTY OF CRAWFORD AND STATE OF OHIO." So on 8 June 1835 both men were already resident in Crawford County, Ohio — not merely buying there from a distance. What that is worth. Samuel Cooper's documented life runs Sussex Co., N.J. (marriage 1821), Independence Twp, Warren Co. (1830 census), then Tymochtee Twp in the 1840 census as the first Ohio sighting. ⇒ this moves the Ohio residence back to at least June 1835, five years earlier, and does it with a residence recital rather than an inference from a land purchase. It does NOT identify WHICH Samuel, and nothing here separates Samuel Cooper from the New-Jersey-born "Saml Cooper b. 1814" of Sycamore Twp. The recital gives a county, and both candidates were in that county.

The literacy difference

ISRAEL SIGNED WITH A MARK; SAMUEL SIGNED HIS NAME — read in a single 800-px crop at ~2.5× chosen wide enough that no annotation could be attached to the wrong line: Israel [his mark] Cooper (Seal) · Samuel Cooper (Seal) What this is and is not evidence of. This is a recorded copy: both names are in the recording clerk's hand, so neither is an autograph. What carries weight is the ANNOTATION — the clerk wrote "his" above and "mark" below an * for Israel and wrote *nothing at all for Samuel. A clerk copying an original has no reason to invent that asymmetry, and every reason to reproduce it. ⇒ Israel Cooper was illiterate; Samuel Cooper could write his name. Graded probable, on the strength of the copy rather than an original. Why it matters beyond biography: literacy is a discriminator. The which-Samuel question has resisted every residence recital this catalog has read ([K.101], [K.104]). A Samuel who signs and a Samuel who marks are different men, so any future Wyandot or Crawford instrument bearing a Cooper signature can be tested against this one. And it is a first for Israel: the catalog holds no other specimen of how he executed a document.

The financing and why this is a purchase money mortgage

Read against [K.96] the two instruments are one transaction. Both are dated 8 June 1835, both concern the same 80 acres, both are witnessed by Jonathan and Caroline Kear, and both are acknowledged before Jonathan Kear, J.P. | | [K.96] | this | |---|---|---| | direction | Sockrider → the Coopers | the Coopers → Sockrider | | nature | deed of sale | mortgage deed | | sum | $375 | $300 | | recorded | 10 July 1835, Book 4 p. 79 | 16 June 1835, Book 4 p. 40 | CORRECTED 2026-09-22 — THE SECURED DEBT IS $180, NOT $300. The defeasance clause is now crop-verified at 2.85× (see the_defeasance_clause_verbatim_2026_09_22) and it names two notes totalling one hundred and eighty. The $300 in the table above is the mortgage's NOMINAL CONSIDERATION — the sum recited in the granting clause as paid for the conveyance — not the money owed. In a mortgage the granting clause's figure is a formality; the defeasance states the debt, and it governs. It is still a purchase-money mortgage — the notes bear even date with the deed, so they are the unpaid balance of the same 8 June 1835 transaction. That part of the reading is now confirmed rather than inferred, and upgraded from probable to certain. But the financial picture inverts: | | as written 2026-09-22 (am) | corrected | |---|---|---| | price ([K.96]) | $375 | $375 | | secured by this mortgage | ~~$300~~ | $180 | | cash down | ~~about $75 (20%)~~ | about $195 (52%) | So the conclusion drawn this morning — "bought mostly on the vendor's credit … a much weaker signal of prosperity than the bare index row suggests" — is WRONG and is withdrawn. They paid more than half the purchase price in cash and cleared the rest on a two-year schedule. ⇒ the joint purchase is a stronger signal of means than that corrected-downward reading allowed — roughly as strong as the bare index row suggested in the first place. The lesson, which is the reusable part: the entry graded the $300 reading probable precisely because the defeasance had been read at ~0.9× and flagged [desc] — and the hedge was right. A figure taken from a mortgage's granting clause is not the debt. The one crop that would have settled it cost about a minute. A recording oddity worth noting: the mortgage was recorded first (16 June) and the deed three weeks later (10 July), which is why it sits 39 pages earlier in the same book.

How it was found and the lapse that preceded it

FamilySearch full-text search, +Sockrider +Cooper — and the + required-term syntax is the useful part: the bare query Sockrider Cooper is an OR search returning 245 pages of noise, while +Sockrider +Cooper returns 4, with this deed book first. Worth keeping: full-text defaults to OR. The film-browse route was never needed; the snippet panel alone showed "Israel & Samuel Cooper", "Mortgage Deed to", "of the County of Crawford" and "8th day of June" before a single image was opened. The lapse: the catalog was NOT grepped first, and it should have been. [K.96] — the companion purchase deed, on the same film, from the same day — has been in the catalog since 2026-09-14, together with the Crawford general-index images that located it. A grep -rl Sockrider would have returned it in a second and would have framed this hunt as "find the companion instrument" rather than "find the 1835 deed". This is the same failure as the Albert Cooper episode earlier the same day, where a person file was written asserting unknown parents that [G.540] had held for six days. ⇒ the standing rule in guidance/feedback_grep_catalog_before_recommending.md is not "grep before recommending" but grep before SEARCHING — the cost is a second and the saving is an hour. No harm done here — the instrument found is genuinely new and supplies exactly the fact [K.96] flagged as missing — but that was luck, not method.