Imogene (Cooper) Shaw 1900–1980

Result: PARTIAL, NOT A NULL — and recorded as partial on purpose, because five pages are unread. FamilySearch fuzzy-matches 'Egbert' exactly as Ancestry does: all 100 rows read are 'E'-initial names (Mary E, Levi E, John E, E B, J E...) and not one is an actual Egbert. ⇒ The cross-index idea is sound but it does not escape the same matching behaviour, so it needs the surname-only recipe here too, not a given-name search. Re-run it bounded on Texas with no given name, and read all six pages.

Result: NULL. No Egbert Arthur Cooper appears in the 1920 Texas index under the surname Cooper. The single Imogene Cooper in Texas in 1920 is a wife at Leonard, Fannin Co., b. abt 1902, in a household with Emma and Jack -- not ours, who was nineteen and a daughter at home, and who in any case could only be a Cooper WIFE by marrying a Cooper. The null is well bounded on the one axis that worried me: Egbert Arthur Cooper's birth year is itself disputed -- his death certificate [F.312] reads '187[3]', FamilySearch indexes 1873, the stone at [G.140] reads 1854 -- so an exact-year search is a weak instrument. But the 194 ranked rows span abt 1873 to abt 1880, so the 1873 reading is covered by the same list. Eastland County Coopers DO appear in it -- Ware Cooper of Eastland, Frank Cooper a lodger at Ranger, Lulu Cooper wife of Virgil V at Ranger, Fannie B Cooper -- which matters because Ranger is exactly where this family was: Imogene (Cooper) Shaw was born there in 1900 and Egbert Arthur Cooper died there in 1928. ⇒ The county is right and the household is not in it under this surname and this age. WHAT IS LEFT: the family is misindexed (a surname misreading, or 'E. A. Cooper' with an age the index put elsewhere), or they were outside Texas in January 1920. The next move is an ED-level browse of Ranger, Eastland Co., or a search on the mother Mary Leslie Maud (Newton) Cooper Mary Leslie Maud, whose given names are rarer than anyone else's in the household. A FOURTH PASS WAS BEGUN AND IS PARTIAL, NOT A NULL: the same surname-only recipe on the MOTHER's birth year -- ?name=_Cooper&birth=1869&birth_x=1-0-0&residence=_texas-usa_46&residence_x=1-0-0_1-0 -- returns 142 rows, of which only PAGE 1 (50) was read, with no Mary Leslie Maud among them. Recorded as partial deliberately: two pages are unread, so this pass proves nothing and must not be cited later as a null.

Result: M7FC-D43 Imogene Cooper, 4 Mar 1900 Hico - 1980; spouse James Alexander Shaw (1896-1957).

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Result: FOUND: 1930 Oakland [D.688], 1940 Reynoldsburg OH [D.689], stillborn son 1922 Ranger [F.326]; Florida Death Index d. 2 Apr 1980 Orange Co. (index only); Find a Grave Index burial Arlington National Cemetery (not opened); GenealogyBank obituary index rows for 'Imogene C Shaw', spouse James A Shaw, children Mary and Helen Dunkle (not opened). NULL: 1920 and 1950 censuses; marriage record.

Result: NULL - no record matching name and birth year among the candidates.