St. Peter's (Episcopal) Church, Perth Amboy NJ — Jones 1925 parish history (organized 1698 = oldest Episcopal parish in NJ). The colonial Register of Baptisms was DESTROYED during the Revolution (Rev. John Preston's lost books, ~1779–81) — no surviving colonial baptisms; the register transcriptions in the book begin ~1810. Full Cooper-surname sweep = NULL for Daniel Sr's family (only an unrelated 19th-c. churchyard Cooper family + the Loyalist clergyman Rev. Dr. Myles Cooper).

Transcription and notes

Source

• Filename:(image held in the family archive) (maintainer added 2026-06-02; text layer present)
• Citation:William Northey Jones, The History of St. Peter's Church in Perth Amboy, New Jersey: the oldest congregation of the Church in the State of New Jersey, from its organization in 1698 to the year of our Lord 1923 … also a genealogy of the families buried in the churchyard (1925). Digitized by the Internet Archive 2022 (Princeton Theological Seminary Library), id historyofstpeterO0jone / historyofstpeter00jone.
• Sweep date:2026-06-02
• Method:pdftotext -layout of the full PDF → grep of the entire extracted text (1.73 MB) for every Cooper-surname variant (Cooper/Couper/Cowper/Kuyper/Cuyper/Kooper). 19 occurrences, all examined in context.

Data from the document

The colonial Register of Baptisms was destroyed during the Revolution

Verbatim, from a wartime letter of the Loyalist rector Rev. John Preston(who returned to a wrecked Perth Amboy parsonage; he died 11 March 1781, chaplain of the 26th Regiment):

"Part of my household furniture is gone and some of my books amongst which was the Register of Baptisms, etc., so that I can make no return to the Societyof the occasional duties for these two years last past." (book p. ~76; extract line 4474–4476)

⇒ St. Peter's earliest baptism register — which would have spanned the parish's 1698 founding through the 1770s, including Daniel Sr's traditional ~1695 birth and any sibling baptisms ~1696–1730 — does not survive.This is a destruction, not merely a gap.

What registers the book does transcribe (all post-Revolution)

• "MARRIAGES RECORDED"— begins 18 Sept 1810(William Davison × Delia Brown, officiant J. Chapman); runs forward.
• "MARRIAGES SINCE SEPTEMBER 10, 1842"— a later marriage series.
• Lists of Burials, Communicants, and Persons Confirmed— all 19th-century.
• Narrative parish history 1698–1923 + a churchyard-burial genealogyof families with monuments in the yard.

None of these reaches the colonial window; the earliest transcribed register is the 1810 marriages.

Cooper-surname occurrences (all 19 — none is Daniel Sr's family)

• Rev. Dr. Myles Cooper(×6 mentions) — President of King's College (Columbia), prominent colonial Anglican / Loyalist; appears in 1767–1775 convention + travel narrative. Unrelated to the catalog's Cooper line.
• 19th-century churchyard "COOPER" family(book p. 239, the only surname-Cooper family in the volume), verbatim from a granite monument:
• Thomas E. Cooper— b. 15 Aug 1812, d. 19 March 1894; his wife Isabella S. Myers— b. 16 June 1825, d. 11 March 1905.
• James Sherman Cooper— b. 14 April 1866, d. at Dawson City, N.W.T., 8 Jan 1898.
• Isabella Myers Cooper— wife of Charles F. Shirley (= daughter Isabella M., b. 26 Aug 1855, d. 4 Feb 1885, m. Charles F. Shirley).
• Children listed 1a–6a: Mary P., John E. (Chicago), Dora E., Harriet C., Jas. S., Isabella M. "This family lived and owned the property corner of Gordon and Rector Streets … and later … on the east side of Water Street (now the Raritan Yacht Club)." → a distinct Perth Amboy Cooper family, patriarch b. 1812— far too late for, and with no shown connection to, Daniel Sr's line.
• "Cooper" as a forename / middle name— Cooper Hancock Runyon (son of W. Parker Runyon, memorial window; b. 1896); Rev. Ezekial Cooper Hancock; Kathleen Cooper Ashley (b. 1916).
• Place / institution names— Cooperstown N.Y.; Cooper Union, N.Y.C.
• Thos. A. Cooper, "the tragedian"— the actor Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (1776–1849), named as a second husband; unrelated.
• Lucy Cooper of Camden, N.J.— married into the Joline family; late, and Camden ⇒ presumptively the fam.3 southern-NJ line, not ours.

What this means for the father-search (analysis → pr.2)

• St. Peter's Perth Amboy was flagged in pr.2's "widen to the Raritan / Perth-Amboy port-of-entry corridor" thread as a priority Anglican baptism target. This entry closes it— and in the strongest way: the colonial baptism register was destroyed, so it could never confirm or deny Daniel Sr's baptism regardless of effort. (The surviving 1810+ registers and the churchyard genealogy hold no relevant Cooper.)
• Of the three Anglican targets named in p.1, this removes Perth Amboy. The remaining Anglican fronts are Trinity Wall Street NYC(1697–1730; free online register only reaches 1769, earlier needs NYG&B Record / FamilySearch / Trinity Archives) and Christ Church Shrewsbury(register begins 1733, postdating the window).

Cross-references

• pr.2 Daniel Sr father search — the Perth-Amboy / port-of-entry church thread this closes
• F.183 Staten Island DRC · F.72 NYC Collegiate DRC · M.25 NYC French Huguenot — the other NYC/Amboy-area registers, all NULL
• fam.3 — Camden/southern-NJ Quaker Cooper line (the "Lucy Cooper of Camden" default attribution)