Document A.72 · probate corpus sweep · transcription: partial
A Cooper-surname sweep of the colonial New York probate corpora — NYHS Abstracts of Wills … City of New York Vols. I–II (1665–1728), Pelletreau's Early Wills of Westchester County 1664–1784, and Anjou's Ulster County Probate Records. Run 2026-05-30.
A.72: A Cooper-surname sweep of the colonial New York probate corpora…People named
| As written | Role | Identified as | What this document says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caleb (Cabel) Cooper, of New York | deceased | Caleb (Cabel) Cooper | residence: City of New York death: between 1704 and 1705, City of New York |
| Helena Cooper | administrator | Helena Cooper | |
| Benjamin Cooper of Southampton, L. I. | mentioned | ||
| John Cooper of Southampton | mentioned | ||
| James Cooper, Esq., of Southampton | mentioned | ||
| Matthew Ling | mentioned | ||
| Ouzel Van Swieton | mentioned |
What this document records
Why it was run
It is the death-adjacent record set the New York side had never been checked in. [pr.2] tests the family tradition that Daniel Sr's father "moved about 1700 to New York and died there". ⇒ the question the sweep asks is narrow and answerable: is there a Cooper death in NYC or the lower Hudson between about 1700 and 1710?
What it found
One candidate, and only one: Caleb Cooper of New York, died intestate, administration to his widow Helena Cooper 18 July 1705, inventory 17 August 1706. He is the sole NYC-proper Cooper death-with-a-widow in the window. He is a candidate, not a match, and the candidacy is argued on Caleb (Cabel) Cooper — not here.
What it ruled out
THE NEGATIVES ARE THE SWEEP'S REAL PRODUCT, and they are recorded so nobody runs them again. ① Westchester Co. wills 1664-1784 — two Cooper hits in 520 pages, both 1783 and neither a death: one is a trade ("Samuel Crawford, Scarsdale, 'Cooper'"), the other a witness. ② Ulster Co. probate, both Anjou volumes — zero surname-Coopers; every hit is the barrel-maker's trade, a Dutch inventory item ("Coopere Craen", "Cuypers gereetschap"), Dutch kooper = buyer, or the place-name Cooper Plain. ③ Every other Cooper in the two NYHS volumes is Southampton, Long Island kindred or an occupational cooper. ⇒ no Hudson-Valley probate corpus yields a Cooper death resembling the tradition's father, and with the NJ Bergen-side volume already checked, that is the whole valley.
Null caveat
Null-at-search, not null-in-fact. A few pages of the Westchester and Anjou PDFs are image-only, and the NYHS results come from OCR. The name indexes and bodies are largely text-extractable, so these are reliable negatives — but they are search results, not a page count.
Two helenas do not conflate
There are TWO unrelated Helenas here. Caleb's widow Helena Cooper of New York City (1705) is not Helena Williams, who married Benjamin Cooper of Southampton, L.I. by licence 7 April 1694. Same forename, different family, eleven years apart — exactly the shape of coincidence that makes a false identification look like a discovery.
A families key was removed
A families: [fam.1] key was removed from this entry 2026-09-01. Placing the Southampton Coopers in the Long Island English-colonial family is a catalog judgement, and an entry may not carry one — see reference_entry_link_types, rejected kind 8. The attribution itself is sound and belongs on [fam.1], where it is argued.
Transcription and notes
Provenance, why the sweep was run, what it ruled out, the OCR caveat and the two-Helenas
warning are all in the source: and coverage: headers and are not repeated here. What
Caleb's candidacy amounts to is argued on [p.574] and [pr.2] — not in this entry.
The candidate: Caleb (Cabel) Cooper of New York — Vol I (1665–1707)
Caleb Cooper appears four times in Vol I (book pp. 328, 334, 350, 393, 408), all within the NYC merchant/official record. In chronological order:
-
Sequestrator of the Van Swieton estate (18 Sept 1702) — book p. 334:
"Letters of Sequestration, granted to Matthew Li[n]g, Mr. Caleb Coo[p]er, and Mr. Edward Antill, of ye estate of Ouzel Van Swieton, By his excellency, Edward, Viscount Cornbury. Whereas, I am credibly informed that Mr. Ouzel Van Swieton, merchant in the city of New York … I do therefore impower and direct you, Matthew Li[n]g, Caleb Cooper, and Edward Antill, to be Sequestrators of the estate, real and personal, of the said Van Swieton."
-
Administrator-in-trust of the Van Swieton estate (sworn 11 Nov 1702) — book p. 350:
"… and Matthew Ling, Cabel Cooper, Edward Anthill and Benjamin Ashe, are sworn as administrators in trust, for Valentine Cruger, 'as the said Ouzel Van Swieton has no relations in this Province.'"
-
Administrator of Matthew Ling's intestate estate (29 Sept 1704) — book p. 393:
"Whereas Matthew Ling, of New York, merchant, lately died intestate, Letters of administration are granted to Peter Fanconier, Ebenezer Willson, Caleb Cooper, and Benjamin Ashe, September 29, 1704."
-
His own death — intestate, administration to widow Helena (18 July 1705) — book p. 408 (abstract "Page 258"):
"Edward, Viscount Cornbury, Captain-General, etc. Whereas Caleb Cooper, of New York, lately died intestate, Letters of administration are granted to his widow, Helena Cooper, July 18, 1705."
-
Inventory of his estate (17 Aug 1706) — book p. 328 (abstract "Page 461"):
"Inventory of estate of Caleb Cooper, late of New York. Taken August 17, 1706. 11 ounces of silver at 9s, £4.19." (= the only item the abstract records; no real property or other goods abstracted.)
Vol II (1708–1728) backward reference — NO new Caleb death record
Caleb appears once in Vol II (book p. 17, Liber 7), but only as a historical recital inside a Lovelace-era re-administration of the Van Swieton estate — it adds no new death datum:
"… the 18 of September, 1702, did empower Matthew Ling, Caleb Cooper, and Edward Antill to be sequestrators of the same … And whereas afterwards, to wit, on the 17 November, 1702, administration, with the will annexed, was granted to Matthew Ling, Caleb Cooper, Benjamin Ashe, and Edward Antill. And whereas … Thomas, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury … at London the 23 of July, 1705, did grant to Beatrix Ouzel, widow, sister and next of kin to said Ouzel Van Sui[e]ten, the administration …"
[desc] This confirms the Van Swieton estate was being re-administered by 1708 (to the decedent's sister via Canterbury), consistent with Caleb having died by mid-1705 — i.e. Caleb's death is fully captured by the Vol I records above; Vol II contributes no second Cooper death in the 1708–1710 window-edge.
Other Coopers in the two volumes (disambiguation) — all Long Island or occupational [desc]
Vol I (1665–1707): - John Cooper (book pp. 1, 42, 43, 52) + John Cooper, Jr. (p. 10) — Long Island (Southold/Oyster Bay-area) English Coopers. - Benjamin Cooper of Southampton, L.I. (book p. 236, abstract "Page 34"): verbatim — "Marriage License granted to Benjamin Cooper of Southampton, L. I., and Helena Williams, April 7, 1694." Note a second, distinct "Helena" here (Benjamin's wife Helena Williams of Southampton) — NOT Caleb's widow Helena Cooper of NYC. Do not conflate.
Vol II (1708–1728) — every Cooper will/administration is the Southampton L.I. family (fam.1) or an occupational "cooper": - John Cooper of Southampton (book pp. 173–175): will 10 Dec 1715; verbatim editor's note — "John Cooper was son of Thomas Cooper, who died November 22, 1691." Wife Hannah; brother Abraham Cooper; son Thomas Cooper; lands at "Cooper's Neck." → directly corroborates the pr.2 falsification of the "Daniel = son of Thomas of Southampton d. 1691" sub-hypothesis (Thomas's children enumerated, no Daniel). - James Cooper, Esq., of Southampton (book pp. 117, 204, 269): will dated "[ ] 9, 1719"; son Nathan Cooper = the fam.1 James-line (Hypothesis C, already weakened by I.148 Howell 1887). - Mary Cooper (widow; administration proved at Court of Common Pleas, Southampton), Samuel (witness), Benjamin, Thomas, Abraham, Hannah, Nathan, Elizabeth, Susanah, Mehitabel Cooper — all within the same Southampton cluster (Coopers Neck, L.I.). - Occupational "cooper" (the trade) tradesmen named in unrelated wills: Chardavoine Jr. of New York; Hybon of New York; Thomas Roberts; Francis Wessells; + the Governor's 1708 order regulating "the Coopers" guild fines.
None is a New York City / Hudson-River death of an unidentified Cooper ~1700–1710, and none is a Daniel.
Westchester County wills 1664–1784 (Pelletreau) — NEGATIVE for the window [desc]
Full-volume text search (520 pp.) for Cooper / Cuyper / Kuyper / Cowper returned 2 hits, both late and irrelevant: - p. 381 — "Samuel Crawford, Scarsdale. 'Cooper.'" (1777; "Cooper" = his trade, not a surname) — proved 30 June 1783. - p. 383 — Cornelius Cooper, a witness to Joseph Theall of Rye's will, proved 15 April 1783.
No early-1700s Cooper death on the east bank of the lower Hudson. Null-at-search caveat per memory feedback_fhc_film_quality_null_caveat.md (a few pages of the PDF are image-only, so coverage is not 100%) — but the volume's name index and body are largely text-extractable, so this is a reliable negative for the 1700–1710 window.
Ulster County Probate Records 1664–1684+ (Anjou, 2 vols) — NEGATIVE [desc]
Added to disk 2026-05-30: (image held in the family archive) + (image held in the family archive) (text-layer present on most pages). Full-volume search for Cooper / Kuyper / Cuyper / Kuiper / Coper across both volumes = ZERO surname-Coopers. Every hit is non-genealogical: occupational (witnesses/decedents described as "Cooper" = the barrel-maker trade — e.g. "Abraham Michel Titz of Hurley, Cooper"; "Teunis Sleght of Kingston, Cooper"; "Joseph Cain of Montgomery, Cooper, deceased intestate"), material (Dutch inventory items: "Coopere Craen" = copper tap; "Coopers tools"; "Cuypers gereetschap"/"Kuypergoed" = cooper's tools/goods), Dutch "kooper" = buyer ("aan de Cooper van die Wei" = to the buyer of that meadow), or the place-name "Cooper Plain." Null-at-search caveat (some image-only pages). → the up-Hudson Ulster corpus adds no candidate; combined with the Westchester negative, no Hudson-Valley probate (NJ Bergen-side Vol 23, NY Westchester, NY Ulster) yields a Cooper death resembling the tradition's father — leaving the NYC-proper Caleb (above) as the sole candidate the sweep produced.
OCR fidelity check (maintainer-requested) — archive.org OCR verified against the page images [desc]
Because the Vol I/II searches relied on archive.org OCR text (the on-disk PDFs being image-only), the two substantive Caleb pages of (image held in the family archive) were rendered and read directly (book p. 408 = PDF 428; book p. 328 = PDF 348; offset +20): - Caleb death grant (book p. 408) — page image reads "Whereas CALEB COOPER, of New York, lately died intestate, Letters of administration are granted to his widow, Helena Cooper, July 18, 1705." → "of New York" IS on the page (small-caps + comma); the archive.org OCR was faithful. (A first-pass low-DPI vision read briefly dropped the phrase — the error was the reader's, not the OCR's; re-zoom resolved it.) - Caleb inventory (book p. 328) — page image reads "Page 461.—Inventory of estate of CALEB COOPER, late of New York. Taken August 17, 1706. 11 ounces of silver at 9s, £4.19." → exact match to the archive.org OCR. - Assessment: archive.org's OCR of these volumes is reliable for the genealogically-critical content (personal names, place-names, dates, document structure); its weakness is numeric/£.s.d. figures and long-s/ligature noise (e.g. on book p. 329 it rendered Gerritt Corsen's "£175" as "£\7o"). The Caleb quotations cataloged here are verbatim-accurate.