I couldn't get back to the Usher topic because a fellow Carpenter
sent me a virus. This has been repaired. The following judgment below
on the Usher book needs revision. Usher spent most of the space of his book
debunking the myth of Carpenter money in England, therefore his
one erroneous genealogical line of New York Carpenters from Dutch origins
had to originate from other motives. Perhaps it was a simple mistake. As
mentioned, this flaw in Usher's book hardly discredits the work as a whole,
which was extremely well put together. Usher's book seems to deserve credit
as the first history of the Carpenter family in America. Sorry Amos. What I
think really happened was that Usher, after he had worked for the Carpenter
Fund Association, was left with a book-length amount of material, which he
then naturally published. Unfortunately he beat Amos to the printing press
by a decade. Naturally Amos wanted to play this down and mentioned Usher
only in the back of his own book, instead of at the very beginning, as a
better scholar would have.(?) The rest is the usual misinformation.
"A "James Usher" was involved in a fraudulent production of a Carpenter
line to prevent "true" Carpenters from getting a legacy in England worth
"thousands of pounds" sterling.
The information below is in the CE CD 2001.
I hope this helps answer your question.John R. Carpenter
La Mesa, CA"
BC