Published county history — Snell & Clayton, History of Sussex and Warren Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881), book pp. 745-749 (PDF pp. 1062-1066), INDEPENDENCE township chapter, section VIII "Churches" and section IX "Cemeteries" — the Pequest Methodist Episcopal Church, the Danville Presbyterian Church and the Christian Church at Vienna, with their founding dates, first trustees, first elders and first enrolled members, and the township's three burial-grounds.

What this document records

🎯 section ix verbatim read at 3x and it is the finding

Verbatim, read at 3× — the last paragraph of section IX:

Vienna, which has long been obliterated. > > Many of the residents of the township belong to the Hackettstown Churches, consequently when > they and their friends have deceased, they have been buried there.

And the preceding sentences, read at 2× on the same crop:

There are three cemeteries in Independence, belonging to the three different churches there > located. The one belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church dates back to about 1810. > The Presbyterian Church [at D]anville, and the Christian Church at Vienna, pur[chas]ed > burying-grounds, which were laid out as such [at th]e time they acquired their property. As > previ[ousl]y stated, there was an old graveyard in a field near [Vien]na, which has long > been obliterated.

The bracketed letters are the column's left edge, clipped by the 2× crop; the words were completed from the text layer and the sentence re-cropped at 3× from "Vienna, which has long been obliterated" onward, which is the part quoted unqualified above.

A fourth, lost burial-ground is recorded — "an old graveyard in a field near Vienna, which has long been obliterated."

📋 section viii transcript grade the three congregations and when each begins

TEXT-LAYER ONLY — recorded for navigation, NOT as transcription. Every figure here needs cropping before use (→ t1).

▸ THE PEQUEST METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Land bought 10 May 1810 from John Cummins for thirty dollars, deed to the first trustees Philip, John, Matthias and Christian Cummins and James Hoagland; the church built the same year. Before that "the early Methodist people used to hold meetings for worship at the old stone house, then the residence of Mr. Philip Cummins," where Bishop Asbury and other pioneer ministers stayed and preached. Snell calls it "no doubt the first Methodist church in what was then Sussex Co., N.J." Finished 1824; the circuit belonged to the Philadelphia Conference; rebuilt 1854, dedicated 18 January 1855.

▸ THE DANVILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. "Formerly an outpost or mission connected with the Hackettstown Church." For a few years before 1824, Rev. Joseph Campbell of Hackettstown held occasional services; a stone church built 1824; formally organized 4 November 1831 by a committee of the Presbytery of Newton. First ruling elders John H. Fleming, David Freeland, Vincent Runyon. The nine first members: by certificate (six from Hackettstown, one from Morristown) John H. Fleming, David Freeland, Vincent Runyon, Catherine Fleming, Sarah Freeland, Catherine Runyon, Harriet Dufford; on profession Nathan Stinson, John Maberry, John C. Fleming, Rhoda Stinson, Margaret Vliet, Eleanor Coryell, Eliza Coryell, Elizabeth Fleming, Jane Johnson.

▸ THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, VIENNA. First organized at Caddington, now called Petersburg, at the house of Matthias Cummins, by Elder J. V. Morris. The OCR gives the date as "April 11, 1889", which cannot be right — the same paragraph has Elder Morris in charge until 1843 and his successor installed 1843. The year is NOT recorded here; it is flagged for cropping at t1. The congregation moved to a new frame church at Vienna, dedicated summer 1858.

🎯 what this answers for the parentage question

Recorded here because it is a fact about the DOCUMENTS, not a conclusion about a person: none of Independence Township's three congregations existed when Israel Cooper Israel Cooper first appears there.

| congregation | begins | Israel Cooper is documented in Independence | |---|---|---| | Pequest Methodist Episcopal | 1810 (land bought 10 May) | from 1802 ([K.83]) | | Danville Presbyterian | 1824 building, 1831 organized | to 1835 ([K.84]) | | Christian Church, Vienna | organized at Caddington, year flagged; at Vienna 1858 | — |

And the township's own history says where its people went instead — "Many of the residents of the township belong to the Hackettstown Churches." Hackettstown is a different township (Snell's own geographical section makes the Morris Canal the dividing line between Independence and Hackettstown), so a register search confined to Independence cannot reach them.

No claim is made here about any Cooper's affiliation. The argument is at Israel Cooper.

⛔ and no cooper is in any of these lists

Not among the Methodist trustees, not among the Presbyterian elders, not among the nineteen named first members at Danville, not among the ministers. That is a restatement of [I.207d]'s chapter-wide null, not a separate finding — the whole Independence chapter, these pages included, was matched against an OCR-tolerant Cooper pattern and returned zero, against 11 matches for the same pattern on PDF p. 867 and 91 Cooper hits across the volume.