Recently when C.A. Carpenter presented Gene C. Zubrinkys fine article on
the net, I was more than intrigued by it. Of particular interest to me was
the Robert Carpenter data, which even a meticulous, family historian like
Gene, finds tantalizing. Robert (b. 1494) I understand was a known sheep
rancher who then put his children into trades. The whole area of Wiltshire
and Hampshire had become an enormous sheep raising area for England, which
then exported finished cloth. All through the late 1400s and early 1500s the
population exploded, while private land (enclosure) found its way into fewer
and fewer hands. Finally in the mid 1500s the wool and cloth market itself
suffered a severe collapse. The resulting social conditions, as you can
imagine, were pitiful with people with poor prospects wandering around in
search of work. I was always puzzled by the father and son William, who were
themselves trade carpenters, with a pattern of frequent change of address.
My own study of the medieval Carpenter family convinces me that the
previously known Carpenter Herefordshire line was just a part of a greater
family, with many more members than was previously supposed. It seems to me
that a great many Carpenters (if not most) in the Wiltshire/Hampshire region
could easily have a family tie in the 1500s. Added to this is the
traditional Carpenter connection to wool and cloth, a tradition the
Carpenters brought to New England and one that some family members carried
on. The apparent wanderings of the father and son Williams should not in any
sense bewilder, but rather fit right into to the social history patterns of
the 1500s. I think we need to abandon the traditional notion of a thin
thread of Carpenters twisting its way back through time. At any rate, I hope
to investigate this problem more.
Sincerely,
Bruce E. Carpenter