Warren Co., NJ — Return of Births, book AJ: ALVAN COOPER and ALPHEUS COOPER, read at the FamilySearch Center 2026-08-20. Page 144 (image 148): "Return of Births in the Township of HACKETTSTOWN, County of Warren … from the first day of May 1853 to the first day of May 1854" — Alvan, male, b. 25 Sep 1853, son of G. G. & C. Cooper, father a Carpenter. Image 287 = book page 272: Alpheus, male, b. 11 July, Great Meadows, parents "E_ & C. Cooper". The plan's index rows are confirmed on page, day-and-month and the father's initial, and corrected on the given name — "Alvin" is ALVAN. The register writes NO YEAR on either row — the year is carried by the return period, and page 272's is May 1858 – May 1859, which does not sit with the index's 1856. UPGRADED THE SAME DAY — three more of the plan's target pages turn out to have been captured after all. Page 107 and page 166 each carry an unnamed male child of ISRAEL COOPER, farmer of Frelinghuysen (30 Jan 1853 and 11 Oct 1854); page 156 carries ELIZABETH COOPER, b. 5 Dec 1853 at Scotts Mountain, daughter of CASPER & CATHARINE COOPER, father a MINER. The index's year for Elizabeth — 1854 — is WRONG; the register says 1853, and the return period independently rules 1854 out.

Transcription and notes

The reel had no films/ record at all — now it has one, with TWO firm anchors

The trip plan flagged that DGS 4210794 had no film record, so its book pages could not be converted to image numbers in advance, and asked for two anchors to be recorded. Both came back, though the second took a second look:

image 148 = book page 144 — "…Township of Hackettstown, County of Warren … from the first day of May 1853 to the first day of May 1854." image 287 = book page 272 — return year 1 May 1858 – 1 May 1859.

⇒ 139 images for 128 pages ≈ 1.09 images per page, so the unreached targets can be interpolated.

The book is a bound sequence of separate township returns, each with its own heading naming the township and return year — so a page number implies neither a place nor a year. Some images carry two returns, the second starting partway down. Recorded in films/film.4210794.yaml.

Alvan Cooper — page 144 [verbatim]

Sep 25 · Hackettstown · Alvan · Male · G. G. & C. Cooper · Carpenter · Hackettstown

The plan's index row read "144 | 25 Sep 1853 | Alvin | G". The register confirms the page, the date and the father's initial, and corrects the given name: ALVAN, not Alvin.

A flag, deliberately not acted on

The plan's §3b names "the Alvin-vs-Calvin question" — whether [p.518] Calvin G. Cooper and an "Alvin" are one man — as something the Randolph–Washington ratables would settle. Here is an ALVAN whose father is G. G. Cooper, a G middle initial like Calvin G.

Not asserted to bear on it, and the reason matters: [p.518] is Morris County (Randolph); this is Warren (Hackettstown). Different counties, and "Alvan son of G. G." is a child born 1853, not a candidate for an adult on an 1813 tax list. Recorded only so the name-form and the initial are visible to whoever works that question.

Alpheus Cooper — page 272, and a year nobody wrote down

July · 11 · " [Great Meadows] · Alpheus · Male · E___ & C. Cooper

Image 287 IS book page 272 — the page the index names. Day and month match exactly (11 July), and the father's initial E matches.

But the year is not on the page

The date column on this register carries only month and day. The year is supplied by the return period printed in the page heading — and page 272's reads "from the First day of May 1858 to the First day of May 1859".

⇒ The natural reading is 11 July 1858, recorded flagged [?]. The index's 1856 is not thereby refuted. These registers do carry late registrations, so a child born July 1856 could be entered in the 1858–59 return. Neither year is asserted.

A correction I have to own

My first pass cropped this page's return-year line too small, read it as "May 1855 to May 1856", and argued the page therefore could not hold the indexed birth. The maintainer pointed out the page number was visible in the same capture. A larger crop of the same corner gives 272 and "1858 … 1859" — the 5 I read was an 8.

The fix was a bigger crop, not a rewording — and the argument built on the small one was simply wrong. That is the RULE ZERO-B failure mode, committed while applying RULE ZERO-B: a crop can be too small and still feel decisive.

Noted, not pursued

Great Meadows is where Pequest Union Cemetery lies — burial place of [p.776] William Hudson Cooper and [p.777] Ralph Hudson Cooper. No connection is claimed; it is simply where this birth was registered.

Added later the same day — three more target pages, read

The film record said "five of the seven plan targets are unreached." Three of them had been captured all along — the frames were on disk, unprocessed. Interpolating from the reel's own anchor (148 = p.144) against the capture list matched five frames to five targets, and reading them confirmed three.

ISRAEL COOPER — two children, page 107 and page 166 [verbatim]

p.107 — Janry 30th 1853 · Johnsonsburg · [no name] · Male · Israel ___ Cooper · Farmer · Frelinghuysen p.166 — [October] 11th · Frelinghuysen Township · [no name] · Do · Israel Cooper · Farmer · Frelinghuysen

Two unnamed male children, twenty months apart, both to a farmer named Israel Cooper living in Frelinghuysen Twp. In both rows the mother's given name is simply not written — on page 107 the gap is visibly empty at 14×, matching the other single-parent rows on that page.

Page 107's Cooper row sits on the page's SECOND return, whose heading is entirely blank — no township, no return period filled in. The row happens to carry its own year ("1853"), so nothing had to be inferred; had it not, this row would have been undatable.

Why this matters is recorded at [name.1], not here: that file's open question is whether the Israel Cooper of the 1850 Independence-Warren Cooper cluster migrated to Stark Co. IL.

ELIZABETH COOPER — page 156, and the index is wrong by a year [verbatim]

Dec 5. · 1853 · Scotts Mountain · Elizabeth Cooper · Fem · Casper & Catharine Cooper · Miner

On "Return of Births in the Township of Oxford, County of Warren … from the 1st day of June 1853 to the 1st day of June 1854."

The plan's index row says 5 Dec 1854. The register says 1853. Two independent checks: the year cell re-cropped at 16× reads 1-8-5-3 with the final digit plainly a 3; and a December 1854 birth cannot appear on a return that closes 1 June 1854. ⇒ the same class of index error [F.242] found twice in Sussex AF.

And two targets were NOT reached — the interpolation missed

Neither target is claimed as read. Image 271 may be page 258 — interpolating back from the firm anchor at 287 = p.272 puts it around p.256–258 — in which case the page holds no Cooper and the index's "1849" is a misread 1859. The page number does not resolve, so this is left open.

AND THE REEL'S IMAGE-TO-PAGE RATE IS NOT CONSTANT, which is why the aim was off:

⇒ the "≈1.09 images per page" figure above holds only in the middle of the book and degrades badly toward the back. Interpolate to start looking, never to cite.

"Cooper" in the OCCUPATION column — twice more

Page 107: "Emma Adaline · William & Sarah Carr · Cooper". Page 156: "Eliza Cole · John & Rebecca Cole · Cooper". Page 303 has a third (Richard & Hannah Nugent, Cooper). ⇒ the barrel-maker trap [F.244] and [F.245] hit on the same day now has five instances across four counties. In any NJ vital register with an occupation column, a "Cooper" hit is a coin-flip.

What remains on this reel

Five of the seven plan targets are now READ — pages 144 (Alvan), 272 (Alpheus), 107, 156 and 166. Two remain unreached: page 258 (15 Aug 1849) and page 308 (30 Sep 1861); frames 271 and 335 were aimed at them and landed nearby but not on them.

Where to aim next time, using the confirmed anchors and the local rate — not the book-wide one: page 308 sits about 5 pages past image 335 = p.303, so try images 340–345. Page 258 sits about 14 pages before image 287 = p.272, so try images 268–274 — and read the page number, because image 271 itself did not yield one.

Frames 4, 279 and 357 are captured and unread.

Cross-references

• F.113 — the index these confirm and correct · F.242 — the same exercise on Sussex AF, where the index was wrong twice
• films/film.4210794.yaml — created for this reel
• name.1 · name.434 · G.237 — the Pequest roster that lists Casper as an open-parentage Y-candidate
• fhc-visit-2026-08-20-results.md