Another post by Vince Summers. Thanks.
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 07:36:12 -0500
From: "Vincent E. Summers" <vsummers(a)nrao.edu>
To: NJCAMDEN-L(a)rootsweb.com
Message-ID: <36EBAD3C.7FCF7A91(a)nrao.edu>
Subject: [NJCAMDEN-L] COOPER - Installment 6
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COOPER's HILL.--That part of Camden known as Cooper's Hill as applied
to the ground then, rising from a marsh west of Fourth Street and south
of Bridge Avenue, forming a knoll covered in part with stately oak and
pine-trees and on the eastern part, beyond Broadway, was a magnificent
apple orchard. It belonged to Richard M. Cooper, president of the
State Bank at Camden, and shortly after his death his son, William D.
Cooper, in 1842, sold the timber, cut down the apple-trees and laid out
the ground in one hundred town lots, which, December 5, 1842, he
offered for sale. They sold rapidly and at good prices, for the high
ground made the locality desirable as a place of residence, and it now
forms the bulk of the Fourth Ward, the most populous in the city,
containing within its limits the City Hall, Cooper Hospital, three
public school-houses, five churches with two thousand members, and ten
thousand people. William D. Cooper made sale to Joab Scull of the lot
on the northeast corner of West and Berkley Streets, upon which the
latter built the first house in the new settlement. The only house on
the tract, before Scull built, was the one Richard M. Cooper built in
1820, on the east side of the Woodbury and Camden Academy road, and
which was removed to make room for the row of three-story bricks on
Broadway, south of Berkley.
Within the limits of what is known as Cooper's Hill were formerly
ponds, of which Mickle, writing in 1845, says: "There was in the olden
time a pond about half a mile southeast of the Court-House in the City
of Camden, which was much frequented by wild geese and ducks. Although
the bed of the pond is now cultivated, there are those who remember
when it contained several feet of water throughout the year. It was
called by the Camden boys 'the Play Pond.'"
This pond is said, by one of the boys who used to play there, Benjamin
Farrow, to be where now stand the dwellings of the late John H. Jones
and JEsse W. Starr. He says there were two ponds, one called the "wet
pond" and the other the "dry pond," and that they were made in the time
of the Revolution by the erection of redoubts.
The land on the north side of Cooper Street, and north of Birch, which
was left to William Cooper by his grandfather, William, was devised to
his sons, Daniel and Richard M. Cooper. The former dying intestate, his
share descended to his three daughters,--Mary Ann (who married William
Carman), Abigail and Esther L. Cooper,--and in the partition of his
estate, which followed his death, the land mentioned was divided into
alternate portions between these daughters by their uncle, Richard M.
Cooper, and about 1842 laid out by William D. Cooper and sold.
On the 7th of February, 1853, Rachel Cooper, daughter of William
Cooper (of the upper ferry), sold the land lying between Market and
Federal Streets, above Eighth, to Charles Fockler, who laid it out into
fifty-nine lots.
That part of the city north of Birch Street and to Main Street was
laid out with streets and in two hundred and forty-five lots in 1852, by
the heirs of William Cooper, and in January of the same year Joseph W.
Cooper laid out one hundred and seventy-two lots north of Main Street,
and advertised them for public sale February 5, 1852. These tracts
comprise the plans and additions to the city on the old Cooper lands.