On Apr 1, 2012, at 12:01 AM, Miles Carpenter wrote:
As I am sure many other descendants from the William Vincent
Carpenter, Rhode Island Branch of the Carpenters will also tell you, . . .
William1 Carpenter of Providence had no middle name, nor did virtually anyone during the
seventeenth century and most of the eighteenth. Vincent was the married name of
William's sister (and only known sibling), Frideswide, whose husband was Nicholas
Vincent (D. H. Carpenter [1901], 321, misidentifies him as Thomas Vincent).
Certain unschooled family historians routinely assign to a person as a middle name his/her
mother's maiden name, ignoring historical naming practices and that records of the
time fail to include it. This, too, is inappropriate.
Traditional methods have established and Y-DNA evidence has confirmed that the respective
progenitors of the Rehoboth and Providence Carpenters were considerably less closely
related than once thought. It is therefore inappropriate to use the word _branch_ in
referring to either group. They were separate, distinct families.
Gene Z.