A Fraktur Birth Certificate for Jerusha Hooper, Upper Springfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, Circa 1804

Stephen Score, Boston, Massachusetts.

Leslie and Peter Warwick, "Society of Friends, A Pictorial Needlework School in Burlington County, New Jersey," Antiques & Fine Art, March/April 2012;

Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 212-3, fig. 374.

Jerusha Hooper's fraktur birth certificate is dated 1795; however the watermark on the paper, C. Austin from the paper firm C. Austin & Carr, indicates it was made in 1804 in Mount Holly, New Jersey, making it one of the earliest papers made in New Jersey. Caleb A. L. Shinn’s birth record also has the same 1804 watermark. This indicates that Jershua was at least nine years old when she made her birth record. 

The small house, basket of strawberries, willow tree, and cedar trees depicted in this fraktur are similar to those decorations featured in Ann Stockton’s pictorial needlework from the Upper Springfield Friends School in Burlington County, New Jersey, made in the same year of 1804. Jerusha Hooper attended the school at same time as Ann Stockton. Jerusha’s father, William Hooper, enlisted in the New Jersey militia in 1798 where the records showed he was a resident of Springfield Township. One plausible reason Jerusha made a watercolor birth record instead of a more expensive silk needlework could be due to her father’s lack of resources. In his will in 1815, he only left $22 in clothing and $77 in household goods but owned notes worth $1,150. Jerusha died unmarried at age 44 in Northhampton Township, New Jersey in 1849.