New Jersey, Return of Deaths in the Township of Independence, County of Warren, 1 May 1869 to 1 May 1870, printed page 328 - eight deaths, certified by F. C. Files, Town Clerk, from the list of Robert L. Garrison, Assessor. NJSA Birth, Marriage and Death Records 1711-1878, volume AO-AP (Deaths, Atlantic-Warren Co., 1870), Ancestry image group 004210798, image 784 of 807.

What this document records

The printed header verbatim

"Return of Deaths in the Township of Independence County of Warren State of New Jersey, from the 1st day of May 1869 to the 1st day of May 1870." - printed page 328. Columns: No. - Date of Death - Name of Deceased - Sex of Dec'd - Married or Single - Age - Occupation - Place of Death - Place of Birth - Names of Parents - Cause of Death - Time of Making Record. The certification at the foot: "I do certify the foregoing to be a true list of deaths in the Township of Independence in the County of Warren N.J. for the year ending May 1st 1870 As received from Robert L. Garrison Assessor of said Township", signed F. C. Files, Town Clerk. (Garrison was also the assessor who supplied [F.278] three years earlier.)

The names of parents column verbatim all eight rows

Read at 3x in two bands; this is the complete column, in order: 1 Daniel & Mary Wolf - 2 Amos & Charlotta Merrell - 3 Thomas & Anna Kelly - 4 Do " " (dittoed from row 3) - 5 Isaah[?] & Margretta Surls[?] - 6 Jerome & Sarah Hartpence - 7 Not Reported - 8 Christopher Cummins.

The name of deceased column verbatim all eight rows

Read at 3x in two bands; complete, in order: 1 Flora - 2 Not named - 3 James - 4 John - 5 Not named - 6 Lydia M. Ketchum[?] - 7 Mary Hetzel - 8 Samuel Cummins. Rows 1-5 give a given name only; the family surname for those rows is carried by the Names of Parents column above.

No cooper is on this page

Neither column carries a Cooper, and both were enumerated rather than sampled. Why the page was pulled: Anna (Antrim) Cooper Anna (Antrim) Cooper, wife of John Cooper John Cooper of Independence, is last seen alive in the 1860 census, and her husband's own death return ([F.278], 4 Feb 1867) enters him as Married - so she was most likely still living then. She is absent from the 1870 census of New Jersey, so her death should fall in this return's period or one of the two before it. It does not. With this page the Independence returns are now read continuously for four years - 1 May 1866 to 1 May 1870 - and the only Cooper in any of them is John himself: 1866-67 is [F.278]; 1867-68 (vol. AL p. 672) and 1868-69 (vol. AN p. 337) were read and filed in September 2026 and the table recording them is on Thomas H. Cooper. => Her death was either never returned, or it happened outside Independence Township.

A sixty year old woman at settlement who is not her

Row 7 deserves saying out loud so nobody has to re-check it. From the 1x view it reads Jan 1870 - Mary Hetzel - F - 60y - Settlement - [birthplace] Not Rep. - [parents] Not Reported - Dropsy. Settlement is the locality where John Cooper died, and Dropsy is what he died of ([F.278]), so the row invites a second look. It is not Anna. The surname is read at 3x as Hetzel, not Cooper; Anna would have been about 70-75, not 60; and nothing on the row ties it to the Cooper household. Recorded as excluded, not as a candidate - and note that the age, date and place in this paragraph come from the 1x orientation view and are approximate, which is exactly why no identification is being built on them.