Mary L. (Cooper) Hissem 1859–1916

Result: FOUND → [D.840]. Pahaquarry Twp, ED 129 sheet 2B, lines 71-74, enumerated 19 July 1910 by Marcus C. Hill: "Hisam James K" 67 Head, "Mary" 51 Wife, "Mary" 16 Niece, "Tibittle John D" 41 Boarder (Sawyer, on mill). Her nativity columns are New Jersey | New Jersey | New Jersey. AND ONE CELL THAT DOES NOT FIT WHAT THIS FILE HOLDS: column 8 codes her M3 — a third marriage — against his M2, both with 21 years in the present one. Re-cropped at 10x; the figure has a 3's two bowls and is not the flat-based 2 written a line above. [N.67] indexes her 1890 marriage under her maiden name, "Mary L. Cooper, 31", and [D.793] gives "married 10 years" in 1900 — both consistent with ONE marriage. Not resolved; see todo:. The plate's own Sheet No. is 2, while Ancestry's citation says Page 7b.

Result: NULL, AND BOUNDED — she is in neither home county under Cooper, nor in any Sussex Stackhouse household. The Sussex Coopers of her age are Caleb's Green Twp children ([D.360]) and the Sparta/Vernon/Andover families; Warren's are Casper's Oxford children and the Blairstown and Hope families. No Mary L. AND THE CATALOG ALREADY HELD WHY SHE IS HARD TO FIND — neither parent had her. Her father George Monroe Cooper is in Stark Co., ILLINOIS in 1870, living in his brother Louis's house as a co-resident brother, with no wife and no children of his own ([D.18]). Her mother Martha Elizabeth (Stackhouse) Cooper is at Green Twp, Sussex, doing "House work" in the Joseph Sharp household, with only the youngest child, Anna May, 4 ([D.789]). ⇒ By June 1870 the marriage had broken up, the mother was in service with the baby, and the two older girls were elsewhere. The next probe is therefore NOT another Cooper spelling: a child placed out was commonly enumerated under the householder's surname, so she must be looked for as a 10-year-old girl in someone else's household — or out of state.

Result: NOT HER, ON THE DOCUMENT AS IT READS. The name is SARAH - capital S, then a-r-a-h, clearly formed and not confusable with Mary at 2x. The age is a 6, confirmed at 10x (closed loop at the bottom under an ascending stroke; a 9 in this hand loops at the top), so the "[?]" is withdrawn. ⇒ 6 months on 13 July 1860 = born about JANUARY 1860, four months after this file's own 20 September 1859, which comes from her death certificate [F.365]. SO THE CHECK FAILED AND PRODUCED SOMETHING BETTER THAN IT WAS LOOKING FOR: a dated conflict. George Monroe Cooper carries BOTH this woman and a dateless daughter "Sarah" from [L.90]; the Sarah row now has a birth of about January 1860, and the two cannot both be Martha's children. The four readings are laid out at George Monroe Cooper; the one that would close this gap - that Sarah L. IS her, misnamed - is possible but is NOT the default, because the enumerator wrote the name clearly. THE INDEX WAS THEN ASKED DIRECTLY, THE SAME DAY, with the corrected place recipe on the 1860 census (Ancestry coll. 7667): name=_Cooper&birth=1860 with residence=_warren-new+jersey-usa_3036&residence_x=1-0-0_1-0 - 7 rows, all read - and the same against _sussex-new+jersey-usa_2837 - 21 rows, all read. Both are COMPLETE county lists of Coopers in her birth cohort, not name searches, so a mangled given name cannot hide her. NO MARY L. COOPER EXISTS IN EITHER COUNTY IN 1860. The Warren list is Sarah (Oxford, abt 1859), Melinda (Frelinghuysen), Martha (Knowlton), Jacob, Margarett, Asher and Emma. The Sussex list of 21 contains exactly one female Cooper infant at GREEN TWP of the right age - "Sarah L Cooper, abt 1859" - which is the [D.661] row this search set out to test. SO THE TWO NULLS CUT BOTH WAYS, and the file should say so rather than pick. They make reading (a) - that "Sarah L" IS her, misnamed - distinctly more likely, because a daughter of Martha's who was alive in July 1860 ought to be in one of these two counties and the only candidate row is that one. But they do NOT establish it: she was born at Allamuchy three months before her parents married, and a child in that position is commonly enumerated with grandparents or elsewhere entirely, under a surname the Cooper lists would never reach. HER 1860 ROW THEREFORE REMAINS UNFOUND, and the gap stays open. The next move is NOT another Cooper search: it is the STACKHOUSE households of Warren and Sussex in 1860, where a three-months-pre-marital granddaughter would plausibly be living.

Result: NULL IN BOTH COUNTIES, and 1880 is the year where a null bites hardest, because this is the first census with a RELATIONSHIP column: any household she was in would have labelled her daughter, servant, boarder or niece, and no such Cooper woman of her age exists in Warren or Sussex. ⇒ THE THREE CENSUS GAPS NOW STAND TOGETHER AS SIX COMPLETE-COUNTY LISTS, ALL READ IN FULL: 1860 Warren 7 / Sussex 21 · 1870 Warren 22 / Sussex 30 · 1880 Warren 17 / Sussex 19. In twenty years and 116 rows the ONLY candidate ever surfaced is [D.828]'s "Susan L Cooper", 10, with a Stackhouse widow at Independence in 1870. THAT IS WORTH STATING AS A FINDING IN ITS OWN RIGHT: between her birth in 1859 and her marriage in 1890 this woman is essentially invisible in the two counties her family lived in, under the surname she was born with. Either she was living elsewhere, or under another surname, or she is the "Susan L" row. ⇒ The next searches should NOT be more Cooper lists - they should be the 1880 HISSAM/HISSEM households (she married into one ten years later, and a servant often married the household she served in), and the Warren Co. STACKHOUSE households. FREE AGAIN: the Warren 1880 list indexes "Eleanor J. Cooper" with parents "CALVIN C., Rachel" at Oxford - a fifth independent index reading of CALVIN C, against the "Calvin B" that [D.4] carried until this morning.

Result: NULL - page 1 is OCR noise (New Orleans, Dallas, Jonesboro); no New Jersey or Pennsylvania item.

Result: Not run.

Result: FOUND memorial 179113458 'Mary L Hissim' -> [G.679].

Result: FOUND -> [F.365], her death certificate (rec. 667793).