Document C.171 · marriage index entry · transcription: partial
New Jersey State Archives, Marriage Records - index entry for Ida E. Cooper, aged 20, and Benjamin Masters, married 14 February 1883 at Allamuchy, Warren County; film 004209870. INDEX ONLY - the return itself has not been seen.
- repository
- New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, New Jersey
- collection
- "New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Records, 1670-1965" - Ancestry collection 61376, record 900306540. Ancestry's own source note: "Marriage Records. New Jersey Marriages. New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, New Jersey."
- identifier
- Film Number 004209870
- date
- 1883-02-14
People named
| As written | Role | Identified as | What this document says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ida E. Cooper | bride | Ida Elizabeth (Cooper) Masters 1862–1940 probable | marriage: 14 Feb 1883, Allamuchy, Warren Co., New Jersey |
| Benjamin Masters | groom | Benjamin Franklin Masters 1836–1928 probable | marriage: 14 Feb 1883, Allamuchy, Warren Co., New Jersey |
What this document records
What it establishes
A DATE AND A PLACE FOR A MARRIAGE THE CATALOG HAD NEITHER FOR. Ida Elizabeth (Cooper) Masters and Benjamin Franklin Masters were linked on 2026-10-24 purely by a Find a Grave family panel, with the note "no marriage record located, and no date or place is known". There is now a record, and it is a state one.
This collection serves no image
RECORDED SO NOBODY LOOKS FOR ONE. The Ancestry record page for this entry carries no image viewer link - checked in the page's own DOM, not merely by eye. The "View image" text on that page belongs to a newspaper item in the suggested-records panel, not to this record.
Where the actual return is
FILM 004209870 IS A FAMILYSEARCH DGS, AND THE CATALOG ALREADY MAPS IT. [F.31]'s table of the New Jersey statewide marriage reels gives DGS 4209870 = "Marriages Atlantic-Warren v. 7 1882-1883", FHL film 495698. The adjacent reel, DGS 004209869 (v. 6, 1881-1882), is recorded at films/film.004209869.yaml as RESTRICTED - every thumbnail padlocked, viewable only at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library - so v. 7 is very probably the same.
Why the return matters and this index does not settle it
NEW JERSEY MARRIAGE RETURNS OF 1883 CARRY A PARENTS' COLUMN. The return behind this index entry should therefore name Roderick Byanton Cooper Roderick Byanton Cooper as the bride's father - which is precisely what [F.386], her death certificate, failed to do, and what the whole Roderick Byanton Cooper-to-John Cooper chain has never had from outside [L.132]. The index gives names, ages, a date and a place and NO PARENTS.
The age disagrees by a year and the date is a coincidence worth noting
The index gives her age as 20 and derives a birth year of "abt 1863". [F.386] and [G.691] both give her birth as 14 Feb 1862. A marriage on 14 February 1883 would fall on her TWENTY-FIRST birthday, not her twentieth. Either the clerk recorded her age as of the day before, or one of the two birth years is wrong. ALSO NOTE THE SHAPE OF THE COINCIDENCE: the marriage date and her birth date are the same day and month, which is the kind of agreement that sometimes means a clerk or an indexer copied one field into the other. Not resolved; reading the return would resolve it.
Transcription and notes
Why the return matters, where it is, and what was tried are in the coverage: header and the
to-dos, and are not repeated here.
Data from the index [verbatim]
| field | as given |
|---|---|
| Name | Ida E. Cooper |
| Gender | Female |
| Marriage Age | 20 |
| Birth Date | abt 1863 (derived by Ancestry from the age, not a recorded value) |
| Marriage Date | 14 Feb 1883 |
| Marriage Place | Allamuchy, Warren, New Jersey, USA |
| Spouse | Benjamin Masters |
| Film Number | 004209870 |
Notes
- This is an index, and the entry's
status:ispartialfor that reason. No image is served for this record in this collection, so there is nothing to crop and RULE ZERO-B does not apply - but neither does any claim to have read the return. - Identification and consequences live at p.2485 and p.2486.