Harry Clark Cooper 1906–1974

Result: NULL ON BOTH SIDES, AND THE COVERAGE CHECK MAKES IT A REAL NULL. (a) No Cooper marriage among the 64 Ella Crowell rows. The only Ella Crowell in the entire New Jersey marriage index 1901-2016 is her 1930 marriage to Reed Ogden -> now [C.160], vol. 26 p. 503. (b) NO HARRY COOPER MARRIAGE ANYWHERE IN NEW JERSEY BETWEEN 1919 AND 1930. The exact-match years run 1901, 1902, 1903 x3, 1905, 1906, 1907 x3, 1909 x2, 1910 x3, 1914 x2, 1917 x2, 1919 x3 - and then jump straight to 1930 (Pauline Weinstock, Carrie Aber), 1931, 1932, 1935, 1936, 1937 x2. The whole decade in which he must have married Ella is empty of Harry Coopers. AND HE IS DEMONSTRABLY IN THIS COLLECTION, which is what gives the null its force: row 47 of page 1 is 'Harry C Cooper | 1940 | New Jersey | Dorothy Hornbeck' = his second marriage, already held as [F.189]. ⇒ The index knows him; it does not know of a 1920s marriage for him. (c) The Bride Index covers 1920-1929 in surname ranges A-C | D-G | H-K | L-O | P-S | T-Z; Crowell sits in A-C and that segment is present. ⇒ A NULL, NOT A COVERAGE GAP - the distinction this catalog was caught on four times on 2026-10-19 alone. WHAT IS NOW KNOWN, STATED CAREFULLY. Their daughter Ruth Evelyn (Cooper) Hovencamp Ruth was born in 1928 and Ella had remarried by 1930 [C.160], so the Cooper marriage - if it was a marriage - began and ended inside a very few years. New Jersey has no record of it. This does NOT disprove the marriage: [G.218]'s bio is the source for it, out-of-state is wholly plausible (Sussex Co. borders Pennsylvania at the Delaware and is forty miles from Port Jervis, N.Y.), and a mis-transcribed surname would defeat both searches. NEXT, in order of cost: the Pennsylvania and New York marriage indexes for 1925-1928; then pages 3-6 of the groom list to make that read complete; then Ruth's own birth record Ruth Evelyn (Cooper) Hovencamp, which would name her parents and may say whether they were married.

Result: TWO CLEAN COMPLETE-COUNTY NULLS — AND TOGETHER WITH THE NATIONWIDE SEARCHES THEY SAY SOMETHING THE NAME SEARCHES COULD NOT. 1930: seven Coopers of his cohort in the whole of Sussex County — Howard J, Howard, Elizabeth, Vilma, Frances E, Emly J and Stewart. No Harry. 1940: five — Leroy, Elizabeth, Ivor A, William H and Eva. No Harry. So he is not hiding behind a mangled given name in his home county; he had LEFT IT. He is in his grandfather's Green Twp household in 1920 [D.352] and he dies in 1974; between 1930 and 1940 he is somewhere else entirely, and no exact national search on Harry Cooper finds him either. ⇒ The remaining shapes are the surrounding counties (Warren, Morris, Passaic, and Northampton Co., Pa.) and the nameless search — no name= at all, bounded on residence and birth year — which is the only form a wrong GIVEN name and a wrong SURNAME cannot both defeat.

THE NAMELESS SEARCH WAS THEN TRIED ON WARREN CO. AND IS RECORDED AS ATTEMPTED, NOT AS A NULL. ?count=50&birth=1906_new+jersey-usa&birth_x=1-0-0&residence=_warren-new+jersey-usa_3036&residence_x=1-0-0_1-0 (coll. 6224) returns 2,181 rows across 44 pages — every Warren County resident born in New Jersey about 1906. That is a browse, not a search, and this catalog's own rule is that an untightened result set which cannot be read is not a search at all. Page 1 was read and nothing was concluded from it. AND THAT IS THE LIMIT OF THE NAMELESS SEARCH, WORTH WRITING DOWN: it worked on Knowlton Twp (43 rows) and on Lackawanna Co. (a ~24-row New-Jersey-born band) because those sets were small. A populous county across a whole birth year is too big for it. ⇒ To use it here the band must be narrowed further — by TOWNSHIP rather than county (Green and Andover Twps have their own ids), or by adding a relation or an occupation.

Result: NULL IN BOTH, AND THE SAME MAN IS THE ONLY DECOY IN EACH. 1930: of 44 exact Harry Coopers of his cohort, exactly one is New Jersey-born — Harry Cooper, 23, single, brother-in-law in the Robert Sayler household, 99 West 55 Street, Bayonne, Hudson Co. EXCLUDED, and on the column that does the work: his father's and mother's birthplaces are both PENNSYLVANIA. Harry Clark Cooper's father Clark Caleb Cooper Clark Caleb Cooper was born in New Jersey. That record's own suggested-records panel confirms it from the other side — every row on it is for ‘Harry Vance Osburne Cooper’ / ‘Harry V Cooper’. 1940: of 47, the one New Jersey-born row is ‘Harry V Cooper Jr’ at Buffalo, Butler Co., Pa. — the same decoy, ten years on. WHERE TO LOOK NEXT. He is ‘Harry C’ in his grandfather's 1920 household [D.352] and the catalog's own files call him Harry Clark Cooper, so a given-name mangling is likely. ⇒ Run the complete-county COOPER list for Sussex Co., N.J. (place id 2837) in both collections — surname-only, no given name, indifferent to the manglings that defeat an exact search. And he married Dorothy Myrtle (Hornbeck) Cooper in 1940 [F.189], so the April 1940 sheet may catch him either side of that.

Result: Not run.

Result: NULL. ([J.155] is the 1977 Monmouth namesake, already flagged.)

Result: SSDI row: Harry Cooper, b. 27 Dec 1906, d. May 1974, residence before 1951 New Jersey (index row). Nothing else.

Result: PZ4T-ZLJ Harry Clark Cooper, 27 Dec 1906 Newton - May 1974 Sussex [borough], Sussex Co. NJ; parents Clark Caleb Cooper G7YV-7J9 and Laura May Acerson. Agrees with this file.

Result: NULL - no record matching name and birth year among the candidates. Nearest: a Harry Cooper b. 15 Nov 1906, d. 19 Aug 1990 - not him (d. 1974).