All,
I have for a long time been trying to figure out my wife's Rhode
Island Carpenter lineage, but it's not easy. It has been a while
since I raised the subject on this list, and so this may be a good
time to bring it up, especially since the list has been rather quiet
lately.
The line goes back reliably to Benjamin Carpenter (c1764-1840) of
South Kingstown. His father was probably named Thomas, since there
was a Benjamin Carpenter of S.K. who was granted administration of the
estate of Thomas Carpenter of Exeter in 1815, but things get hairy
from there on. Lots of people point to the birth record in 1738 of a
Thomas Carpenter in East Greenwich, and say that's the one who later
died in Exeter, but I haven't found anything to make that connection,
nor even anything to show that the Thomas born in 1738 even survived
to adulthood. Indeed, the 1738 birth record shows the father as
another Thomas, but doesn't give the mother's name. Meanwhile, the
RIGR index of probate info shows a case from 1778 in South Kingstown
where a Thomas Carpenter left a widow Elizabeth and a bunch of
children, including a Thomas. It is tempting to jump to the
conclusion that this son Thomas was the same Thomas who died in 1815,
but it would be nice to fill in at least a little bit of that 37-year
gap first.
One of the popular theories is that Thomas (d. 1815) was the son of
Thomas, who was the son of either Joseph or Oliver, both of whom were
sons of Abiah, son of William2 of Rehoboth. Now, as it happens,
Abiah is a particularly ticklish case, since a bunch of children
have been misattributed to him (for a discussion of this problem,
see Gene Zubrinsky's Carpenter sketches, found at
http://members.cox.net/jrcrin001/carplink.htm along with much
material on the other early Carpenters of the Rehoboth line).
However, as it also happens, both Joseph and Oliver seem to make the
cut as documented sons of Abiah. Thus, the line would be complete all
the way to William1 of Shalbourne parish back in Wiltshire, England,
if only I could patch the holes represented by the two Thomases
(assuming that this theory is actually correct).
Can anyone shed light on either of these two Thomases?
John Chandler