Document C.115 · marriage return · transcription: verbatim
Sussex County, New Jersey — the loose marriage return of the Reverend John Boyd, six couples married 22 August – 24 November 1812, signed by him. FamilySearch New Jersey, County Marriages, 1682-1956; DGS 004541257 ("Sussex. Marriage Records 1809–1827"), image 326 of 1,634.
- repository
- FamilySearch — New Jersey, County Marriages, 1682-1956
- collection
- Sussex. Marriage Records 1809–1827 (loose returns); DGS 004541257, image 326 of 1,634
- date
- 1812-11-12
What is transcribed: One minister's return, complete — the six marriages he certifies, the certificate clause, and his signature. The image carries nothing else.
People named
| As written | Role | Identified as | What this document says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cooper, Robert | groom | Robert Cooper 1783–1863 candidate | |
| Sheffer, Sophia | bride | Sophia (Sheffer) Cooper 1792 candidate | |
| Boyd, John | officiant |
What this document records
What it says
"Robert Cooper & Sophia Sheffer were married Nov[r]. 12 — 1812", the fifth of six couples, in a return signed "John Boyd". This is the document behind the index row Robert Cooper was working from, and the index proved exactly faithful to it.
What it does not say
No ages, no residences, no parents, no witnesses, no township. The return gives names and dates and nothing else. ⇒ It cannot, by itself, say which Robert Cooper this is — that argument lives at Robert Cooper, not here. Nor does it state where the marriage took place. "Sussex, New Jersey" is the county of the return, not a stated venue.
Transcription and notes
Data from the document [verbatim]
Read at 2× (names and dates) and 4× (the bride's surname, the signature):
Isaac Dennus[?] & Hulda Shaw were married August 22 — 1812 Thomas Hunt jun[r] & Rebecca Turner were married Aug 25ᵗʰ — 1812 Robert Lanning & Mary Decker were were married Sepᵗ 17 — 1812 George Hunt & Eliza Brown were married Sept. 24ᵗʰ — 1812 Robert Cooper & Sophia Sheffer were married Novʳ. 12 — 1812 Benjamine Chandler & Mary Luce were married Novʳ 24 — 1812
I do certify that the above named persons were respectively married on the times above mentioned by me
John Boyd (signature)
The doubled "were were" on line 3 is the document's, not a transcription slip — the writer wrote the word twice.
The bride's surname reads SHEFFER at 4× — S-h-e-f-f-e-r, with the doubled descender of a
period ff. Not Shepper, not Sheffen. The FamilySearch index has it right — and
[C.116]'s register clerk, copying from this return into the county book, wrote the same six
letters.
What this record does NOT contain
No ages. No residences. No parents. No occupations. No witnesses. No venue. New Jersey's parent-naming marriage returns — the series with a Names of Parents column — begin in 1848; this is a minister's return of 1812, and it carries names and dates only.
That is structural, not an omission. It is the same limitation that stopped [C.84] from saying whose son its Samuel was.
The index was faithful — worth recording, on a week when four were not
The index row read Robert Cooper × Sophia Sheffer, 12 Nov 1812, Sussex, New Jersey. The
document says exactly that.
In the four days to 2026-09-23 this catalog found four index-vs-document discrepancies —
Banar for Ben R., Ardilla Burket for Ardella Twiggs, Son for stepson, Employee
for Servant. Every one was in a field the indexer had to interpret: a cramped given
name, a maiden surname, a relationship term. This one is a field the indexer only had to
copy — and copying is what indexes are reliably good at.
⇒ the lesson is not "indexes lie". It is "an index is a finding aid, never the record" — which is why the page was pulled even though the row turned out to be right. The cost of checking a true row is one download; the cost of trusting a false one is a day.
Cross-references
- C.116 — the county clerk's register copy of this same return, on a different film
- p.114 Robert Cooper of Independence Twp Warren — where the identification is argued
- p.2056 Sophia Cooper — her maiden name, and what an 1812 marriage does to her birth range
- C.83 — the 1851 return naming William Shafer Cooper, son of Robert
- C.84 · C.113 — the same county's register, nine years later
- name.637 Isaac Dennis — the first couple on this return