The following item appears in the current issue of the NEHGS online
newsletter:
Family Record at NEHGS Sheds Light on Richard Carpenter "the Spy"
Members of the NEHGS Electronic Publications team can often be found
searching through the countless treasures in our manuscript collections selecting
items to share with you on
NewEnglandAncestors.org. During a recent treasure hunt,
a record was discovered for the family of Richard Carpenter which included
information about his arrest and death sentence for "Fritning the Generals Gage
How Burgoin & Clinton and twenty two British Regiments in the town of Boston."
Further research uncovered a page devoted to this individual in Amos B.
Carpenter's A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the Carpenter Family
in America (1898), where the author expressed his belief that "Richard the spy"
was personally asked by George Washington (a close friend of Carpenter's
wife) to perform these duties. The author went on to argue that "Richard the
spy"
and Richard Carpenter of Goshen, New York, were one and the same, and
interviewed descendants to obtain additional information to make his case. These
descendants offered two family traditions about Richard's fate — the first was that
he was executed by the British; the second told that when arrested he claimed
to be an emigrant from Ireland. He imitated the Irish brogue so accurately
that the British were unable to convict him, but kept him prisoner on a British
war ship, where he took sick and died.
Though consisting of just a single page, the Carpenter record at NEHGS
contradicts certain elements of the profile in the Carpenter genealogy (such as the
author's Richard of Goshen conclusion), identifies places of origin for both
he and his wife (he was from Ireland), gives his children's names and dates of
birth, and notes his imprisonment, release, and death. Additional research
revealed that John Hancock wrote to George Washington in 1777 expressing the
recently released (via exchange) Carpenter's desire to serve again, and that a
"Richards" Carpenter was kept on the notorious prison ship Old Jersey.
Additional
details can be found in "Richard the Spy," Rod D. Moody's article about the
document and subsequent discoveries that were made.
The family record with transcription and the article can be viewed in the
Tales From the Manuscript Collection area of
NewEnglandAncestors.org. at <A
HREF="http://rd.bcentral.com/?ID=1273772&s=5982330">
www.newenglandancestors.org/libraries/manuscripts/?page_id=656&attrib...