Agnes Cooper 1732–1737

Still unknown, and where we have looked

• Birthplace not established.
• Burial not yet found. 3 searches recorded:
  findagrave 2026-11-02 · Harlingen Reformed Church Cemetery, Belle Mead, Somerset Co. (cemetery id 100017, read off the site's own cemetery-search href),...

  Searched for: Harlingen Reformed Church Cemetery, Belle Mead, Somerset Co. (cemetery id 100017, read off the site's own cemetery-search href), lastname=Cooper -- her burial candidate (a), the churchyard of the congregation that baptised her

  Result: NULL FOR HER. 5 Cooper memorials in 1,001, and the EARLIEST DIED IN 1865 -- a hundred and twenty-eight years after her supposed death. None of the five is in this catalog; their spouse surnames (Hoagland, Vreeland, Brokaw) are Montgomery Twp Dutch families. CONTROL, same pass: the ground's unfiltered 1720-1800 death window returns 17 memorials, so the index does reach the colonial period here -- but its EARLIEST DEATH IS 1746, and both pre-1760 memorials are marked CENOTAPH. A May 1737 death sits NINE YEARS before the earliest burial the index holds for this ground. It cannot support the identification either way. Recorded at [G.725]. A QUALIFIER ADDED AND WITHDRAWN THE SAME AFTERNOON, recorded so it is not re-raised. It was briefly argued from Snell 1881 ([I.259]) that the FIRST Harlingen church stood elsewhere - on Peter Sonmans' land near Van Aken Station - and that this sweep had therefore searched the wrong enclosure. [F.222], the printed GMNJ transcription of this congregation's own records and already in the catalog, refutes it: the church was organised 18 May 1727 and its building erected "at present day Belle Mead, where the old cemetery established there is still in use". ⇒ the ground swept above IS the congregation's original burial ground, established five years before her baptism, and Snell's "border of Hillsborough" is the same site seen from the Montgomery line. THE NULL STANDS AS WRITTEN.
  findagrave 2026-11-02 · NOT A FRESH SEARCH -- her burial candidate (b), Basking Ridge Presbyterian Church Cemetery -- checked against [G.717]'s complete...

  Searched for: NOT A FRESH SEARCH -- her burial candidate (b), Basking Ridge Presbyterian Church Cemetery -- checked against [G.717]'s complete 26-memorial Cooper roster for that churchyard rather than by a new search

  Result: NULL FOR HER, AND THE REASON IS STRUCTURAL. No Agnes or Agnietje among the 26. AND THE ROSTER'S EARLIEST DEATH IS HER OWN MOTHER -- Grace Runyon Cooper, 17 Jan 1706 - 8 Nov 1755, memorial 70802032. => that churchyard's Cooper series BEGINS EIGHTEEN YEARS AFTER this child's supposed death, so it cannot speak to any Cooper death before 1755. Next earliest are Mary (d. 1794), Daniel Sr (d. 1795), Bryan Lafferty (d. 1798), George (d. 1801). AND THE NULL IS WEAKER THAN IT LOOKED, 2026-11-02 LATER ([I.259]). Snell 1881's Bernards Township BURIAL-PLACES section says the Basking Ridge ground was deeded 8 Feb 1731, that the oldest gravestone he could find was 1736, that "there were probably earlier interments, the first settlers having arrived from 1717 to 1725", and that a stone dated 1719 had already vanished by his day. The yard is "filled thickly with graves" and he transcribes exactly ONE inscription. ⇒ the 1755 floor above is a property of the SURVIVING STONES, not of the ground - which was in use a quarter-century before this child died. It still does not put her there; it removes the index's silence as an argument against it.
  findagrave 2026-11-02 · NOT A FRESH SEARCH -- her burial candidate (c), the Long Hill family burial area -- checked against [G.4]'s seven-stone inventory of the...

  Searched for: NOT A FRESH SEARCH -- her burial candidate (c), the Long Hill family burial area -- checked against [G.4]'s seven-stone inventory of the Cooper Family Burying Ground and [G.719]'s nine-memorial Old Cemetery roster

  Result: NULL. Neither roster contains an Agnes or Agnietje. t1 had already established this of [G.4]; [G.719] added the two memorials [G.4] lacks and they are JOHN AND ANNE RUNYON LAYTON, not a Cooper child. Note [G.719]'s finding that at Long Hill 'Old Cemetery holds the graves, Cooper Family Memorial holds the stones', so a stone-based inventory of that ground is not the same thing as a list of who lies in it.