Thank you Gene for the information.
Bob Carpenter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Zubrinsky" <GeneZub(a)aol.com>
To: <carpenter(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2013 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: [CARPENTER] Rehoboth Carpenter Family
On Jul 13, 2013, Joyce Carpenter Sharpley wrote:
My Carpenter family are the Rehobeth Carpenters: 1 William, 2
Oliver, 3
Abiah, 4 Christopher, 5 Robert, and 5 Ezra Joneth. Abiah moved from MA to
RI and the succeeding family line I mention all lived in RI. but are
listed as MA Revolutionary War Soldiers. I need to prove that Robert and
Ezra Joneth MA soldiers are the same family that actually lived in RI.
Does anyone know why RI men would be listed in MA revolutionary soldiers
lists?
Joyce,
Presumably your switching the order of Oliver and Abiah was inadvertent.
The generation numbers, incidentally, begin with William1 (b. ca. 1575;
_Bevis_ passenger, 1638, with William2 [b. ca. 1605] and his family, who
were ultimately of Rehoboth); Abiah is therefore generation 3 and Oliver
generation 4.
It's highly unlikely that Ezra Carpenter was the son of Robert6
(Christopher5, Oliver4, etc.). James N. Arnold, _Vital Record of Rhode
Island, 1636–1850_, 1:3(West Greenwich):64, lists the children of Robert and
Charity (Roberts) Carpenter as Christopher, b. 16 March 1756; John, b. 11
Feb. 1758; Phebe, b. 2 Nov. 1760; and Mercy, b. 14 May 1763. All four birth
records are cited as appearing together in original West Greenwich Vital
Records, 1:122. The next line in the Arnold volume lists "Ezra, of Mercy,
Aug. 10, 1769" and cites original West Greenwich Vital Records, 2:70. Amos
B. Carpenter's carelessness and/or limited knowledge of colonial records
caused him to conclude, erroneously, that Mercy was Robert's second wife,
and that Ezra was his son (_Carpenter Memorial_, 129, 245); this
misinterpretation has, through repetition, taken on a life of its own.
If Ezra had been Robert Carpenter's son, his birth record would almost
certainly have been included with those of the other four children, on page
122 of original volume 1. That Ezra's birth record contains only his
mother's name is a strong indication that he was born out of wedlock. The
same page of the Arnold volume indicates that a daughter Mercy was born in
West Greenwich on 13 March 1739 to Jeremiah Carpenter (Robert's elder
brother) and his wife, Elizabeth (Reynolds). It was probably thIs Mercy
Carpenter who gave birth to Ezra; the father is unknown. It's possible that
there is a reference to this matter in town-meeting records. In any case,
this Ezra Carpenter, born in 1769, was too young to have participated in the
Revolution during the period from 1775 to 1780, when the men of that name
listed in _Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors_ did.
Link to the aforementioned page in Arnold, _Vital Record of Rhode Island_:
http://interactive.ancestry.com/15395/dvm_PrimSrc000266-00222-0?backurl=h....
It is also virtually certain that the Robert Carpenter who served in the
Revolution from Palmer, Massachusetts, was not the Rhode Island man of that
name, son of Christopher5 Carpenter. The following is a slightly modified
copy of an e-mail excerpt of mine that appears in the Notes section of John
R. Carpenter's _Carpenters' Encyclopedia of Carpenters_ under Robert
Carpenter:
_Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War_, 3:125: The
service record for Robert Carpenter (about halfway down the page) begins by
identifying him as from "Kingstown (also given [as] Palmer)." It was
presumably Amos B. Carpenter's assumption that this was Kingstown, Rhode
Island, that caused him to paraphrase (poorly) this service record as part
of his listing for Christopher5's son Robert (_Carpenter Memorial_, 129).
That, of course, is dubious on its face: rarely did a Rhode Island resident
enlist in the Massachusetts Line. More to the point, however, "Kings Town"
was an "archaic" name of Palmer, Massachusetts (William Francis Galvin,
_Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities and Towns in Massachusetts_,
5th ed. [Boston, 1997], 89-90). Revolutionary War soldier Robert Carpenter
therefore cannot--on the basis of his service record--be identified as the
Robert Carpenter born at East Greenwich on 25 (not 5, as per _Carpenter
Memorial_, 129) March 1722, son of Christopher5 (Oliver4, etc.).
Link to page in _Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary
War_ (available to
Ancestry.com subscribers only):
http://interactive.ancestry.com/7726/7726-Volume3-0126?backurl=&ssrc=....
If the Robert Carpenter family had removed from West Greenwich to Palmer, it
would have been after they were enumerated at West Greenwich in the 1774
Rhode Island census (3 males >16; 1 male <16; 2 females >16: and 2 females
<16) and before the 1777 Rhode Island military census, in which they do not
appear. But Robert and Charity's son John and his wife, Sarah (Stone), had
five children at West Greenwich between 1779 and 1788, of whom two, sons
Christopher and Amos, married there in 1804 and 1813, respectively. This
suggests either that the family stayed put in or near West Greenwich, or, if
they did move, that they had returned to the area by 1779. A biographical
sketch of Amos's son, John A. Carpenter, relates that Amos settled in
Pomfret, Conn., in 1837 (the _Carpenter Memorial_, 409, has him born there,
in 1793), and that John A.'s great-grandfather Robert served in the
Revolution (Allen B. Lincoln, ed., _A Modern History of Windham County,
Connecticut, Volume II_ [1920], 1389
[
http://books.google.com/books?id=zqkyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1389&lpg=PA138...]).
The source of the latter information is unknown, however, and could have
been taken from Amos B. Carpenter's highly unreliable _Carpenter Memorial_
(more properly, _A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the
Carpenter Family in America_ [1898]). In any case, the information below
refutes it.
Robert Carpenter's bounty-land-warrant application file, no. 1354, contains
a letter, dated in 1828, indicating that a warrant for 100 acres had been
issued to Robert Carpenter, "son and only heir of Robert Carpenter, who was
a soldier of the Massachusetts Line" (Revolutionary War Pension Files,
online at Fold3). In an 1828 declaration by the son, Robert, he describes
himself as the "only heir at law of Robert Carpenter deceased." His
description as "only heir" does not square with the four children recorded
to Robert and Charity (Roberts) Carpenter at West Greenwich between 1756 and
1764, and that at least two of them also had children (see above). In the
same file is a deposition by Calvin Loomis, dated in 1827, stating that
Robert Carpenter, "at the time of his decease [a few days before the capture
of General Burgoyne] left _one child_ [my emphasis] who was brought up in
the family of Abner Loomis the father of this deponent." A deposition by
Robert Carpenter, also dated in 1827, says that "at an early period of his
life and before he had attained the age of ten years, he received and had in
his possession a certain instrument in writing, executed by Robert
Carpenter -- the father of this deponent, bearing date in the summer of
1777 -- the purport of which instrument was to authorize Abner Loomis of the
town of Palmer . . . as guardian of the deponent . . . in case he the said
Robert Carpenter should happen to be killed, or die in the service of the
United States."
This, it seems to me, is sufficient to conclude that Robert Carpenter of
West Greenwich (b. 1722) and Robert Carpenter of Palmer (d. 1777) were two
different people. But for the unconvinced, there are other facts that
reinforce that conclusion: The father of a boy with significantly older
siblings would not have arranged for a family friend to raise him. The
younger Robert's gravestone, in Pleasant Valley East Cemetery, Springwater,
Livingston Co., N.Y., has his birth year as 1762. If accurate (as the
above-quoted passage from his deposition implies), it appears to conflict
with the recorded birth of Robert and Charity (Roberts) Carpenter's daughter
Mercy, at West Greenwich in May 1763 (see above). One must also consider
the unlikelihood that a 55-year-old man (b. East Greenwich, 1722) would
enlist for a three-year term in the Continental Army and be deployed to
fight and die in a pitched battle (Saratoga).
Perhaps a search of West Greenwich land- and probate-record films (beginning
with the indexes) will yield additional information about Robert6 and
Charity Carpenter. Neither Robert nor Charity Carpenter appears in
FamilySearch's online digital images of Hampshire County grantor and grantee
indexes (listed under Hampden Co., which holds them).
Gene Z.
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