[SLAVERY & ABOLITION]. Manuscript bill of sale for an enslaved man named Cuff. New Jersey, 3 April 1821.

1 page, 7 7/8 x 9 7/8 in., few small separations along folds, light wear to edges. Docketed to verso.

A manuscript bill of sale for "one negro man named Cuff age about twenty two years old." The enslaved man was sold by Samuel Cooper to Nathan Cooper, both of Chester Township in Morris County, New Jersey, for three hundred dollars. Samuel Cooper outlines the terms of the sale, writing, in part, "...the said negro at the time of delivery is well & sound both in body & limb & that he is a slave for life..."

New Jersey was the last northern state to pass a law begining the process of gradual emancipation of enslaved persons within its borders. The act passed on 15 February 1804 stated that children of enslaved persons born after 4 July 1804 would be freed when they reached a certain age - 21 for women and 25 for males. Enslaved persons born prior to that date, however, would remain enslaved for their entire lives.

The Nathan Cooper referred to in this bill of sale is likely Nathan A. Cooper (1802-1879), who in 1818 inherited his family's substantial estate, comprising farm lands, an iron mine, and a grist mill. Ancestry's North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 database also lists an enslaved "Negro boy, Paris," who was inherited by Nathan upon his father's death. Nathan Cooper would go on to become a brigadier general of cavalry in 1854, and to build the General Nathan Cooper Mansion in 1860. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, nearly 100 years after Cooper's death in 1879.

This lot is located in Cincinnati.