John Chandler wrote:
<< Did you mean to assert a discrepancy between the VRs and the gravestone
[for Ensign Abiah Carpenter's date of death]? The Newman Cemetery is
included in the RI Cem. DB, and the online index gives the death date as the
28th, i.e., the same as the VR date. >>
I did. But upon reviewing Marion Pearce Carter's transcription of Ensign
Abiah Carpenter's gravestone inscription, it find that it says 23 or 26 April
1732 (Carter, THE OLD REHOBOTH CEMETERY: "THE RING OF THE TOWN" AT EAST
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, NEAR NEWMAN'S CHURCH [Attleboro, Mass., 1932], p.
16 [FHL microfilm 22366, item 16]). The ambiguous identification of the
day's second digit might reflect a weathered 8.
<< I'm not sure that's possible [that 1681 freeman Abiah was probably the
one
born at Weymouth, 9 April 1643]. The early Warwick records show that Abiah
Carpenter was named to juries in 1665 and 1667, and Austin says Abiah was
fined 20s in 1678 for *not* serving on a jury. I've always assumed that only
freemen would be appointed to juries. >>
My understanding is that a town's "admitted inhabitants," whether freemen or
not, were subject to selection at town meetings for jury duty. The only
activities from which a non-freeman was excluded (so far as I'm aware) were
standing for election as deputy to the General Court, voting for the higher
officials of the colony (i.e., governor, deputy governor, and
assistants/magistrates), and himself filling these colony posts. (With the
1665 advent in Plymouth Colony of town selectmen, they were chosen from
among, but not exclusively by, the freemen. I would suppose this also
applied to town councilmen in Rhode Island.)
Warwick townsmen could not have chosen "Mr." Abiah Carpenter to serve in 1682
as their deputy to the General Court if he hadn't been a freeman. I suspect
it's more than coincidence that a Warwick resident of that name (no "Mr.")
had become a freeman the previous year: the 1681 freeman probably became the
1682 deputy. While men in their early 20s were sometimes made freemen,
virtually no man of that age would have been elected deputy or referred to as
"Mr." (then a title of respect, granted [informally] only to a few). Even in
more liberal Rhode Island, freemanship was by no means automatic. Some men
were never made freemen; of those who were, many, perhaps most, were of
middle age or older--particularly when, like Rehoboth William's son Abiah,
neither they nor their fathers were founders or proprietors of the town in
which they lived.
If (as in a previous message) 1681 freeman Abiah had been the namesake son of
Abiah of Weymouth/Rehoboth/Warwick (b. 1643), rather than the latter himself,
he would have been born no later than 1660, when his father was no more than
a highly unlikely 17. (Mary Redway [b. 27 May 1646], presumably Abiah's
first wife, was then no more than 14.) I've seen no evidence of more than
one Abiah Carpenter (father-son or otherwise) in 17th-century Rhode Island:
there is no record during this period, for example, in which the name is
followed by "Jr." or "Sr.," nor (to my knowledge) is there a record of
another of that name having been made a freeman previous to 1681.
Gene Z.