Those tracing Carpenter ancestry through John Carpenter of East Greenwich,
R.I. (d. there 25 Aug. 1753, in his 87th yr.), generally identify his father
as Abiah3 Carpenter of Rehoboth, Mass., and Warwick, R.I. (b. Weymouth,
Mass., 9 April [not Feb.] 1643) (see L. Effingham de Forest and Anne Lawrence
de Forest, JAMES COX BRADY AND HIS ANCESTRY [N.Y., 1933], p. 135; John
Osborne Austin, THE GENEALOGICAL DICTIONARY OF RHODE ISLAND [Providence,
1887; repr. Baltimore, 1978], p. 36). John’s decades-long residence at East
Greenwich (on Warwick’s southern border) and approximate birth year of 1667
make Abiah, then 23 or 24, a plausible choice. Documentary evidence
nevertheless indicates that John’s father was not Abiah but his brother
Joseph (bp. Shalbourne, England, 6 April 1634).
In 1667, when the Plymouth Colony township of Swansea was created (primarily
from Rehoboth), Joseph3 Carpenter of Rehoboth became a second-rank proprietor
of the new settlement. (A proprietor’s rank in Swansea’s three-tiered social
structure determined the size of common-land allotments he received.) In his
will, dated 3 May 1675, Joseph leaves to sons Joseph, Benjamin, and John “my
Rights of Comonage within the Towne of Rehoboth and all my Rights in Swansey
on the east syde of the River” (Plymouth Colony Wills, 3:2:33). On 10 January
1708 John Carpenter of East Greenwich, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, sold to brother Benjamin Carpenter of Swansea, one-third part of
two ranks in the undivided lands at Swansea (Swansea Proprietors’ Records,
1:167). Clearly this was Joseph3’s son John, selling his interest in the
Swansea rights that he and brothers Joseph and Benjamin had inherited from
their father.
The births of Joseph3 and Margaret (Sutton) Carpenter’s first four children
are recorded at Rehoboth: Joseph, b. 15 Aug. 1656: Benjamin, b. 15 Jan.
1657[/8]; Abigail, b. 15 March 1659; and Est(h)er/Hester, b. 10 March 1661
(Rehoboth VR, 1:10). The births of three others are recorded at Swansea:
Hannah, b. 21st of 1st mo. [March, not Jan.] 1671; Solomon, b. 27 April 1673;
and Margaret, b. 4 May 1675, two days before her father’s burial (Swansea VR,
A:17, 33, 59, 147). Despite some sources’ presenting Joseph and Margaret’s
son John as Hannah’s twin, his birth is not recorded. But the 1667 birth year
implied by his age at death falls easily within the interval between the
last-recorded Rehoboth birth (Esther’s) and the first-recorded one at Swansea
(Hannah’s).
Amos B. Carpenter (p. 45) misidentifies a Newman (Old Rehoboth) Cemetery
gravestone marked “M. C. D. Y. 1700 A. G. 65” as that of Margaret (Sutton)
Carpenter. While there is in fact no record of her death or burial, her
estate inventory was taken on 4 October 1676 and is recorded immediately
after that of husband Joseph (Plymouth Colony Wills, 3:2:33-36, 37-38). If,
as A. B. Carpenter claims (p. 45), Joseph was buried near the 100-acre Cove
in that part of Swansea now Barrington, R.I., we may assume that Margaret
joined him there. Guardianship records pertaining to the children are not
found.
Gene Z.