Person talk:William Carpenter (5)

Christening date in Amesbury [12 December 2010]

Some compilers indicate that he was born or christened 23 May 1605 in Amesbury, Wiltshire, England. I could find no reliable source for this (only Ancestral File and IGI). Zubrinsky does not mention this christening date (even to discount it) and I suspect that it is either fabricated or is a different William Carpenter. I have removed it from this record. --DataAnalyst 19:14, 11 December 2010 (EST)

I stand corrected about Zubrinsky not mentioning (and refuting) a specific christening date. I think I did a search for 1605 rather than reading the article in full (I've read it before). As quoted below, the christening date of 23 May 1605 is a fabrication. --DataAnalyst 22:54, 11 December 2010 (EST)

William of Rehoboth

Gene Zubrinksy in his Carpenter Sketches has the following regarding William Carpenter of Rehoboth, MA.

WILLIAM2 CARPENTER (William1) was born in England about 1605 and died at Rehoboth, Plymouth Colony (that part now Rumford, East Providence, Rhode Island), on 7 February 1658[/9]. He married in the parish of Shalbourne, Berkshire, England, on 28 April 1625, ABIGAIL BRIANT, baptized there on 27 May 1604 and buried at Rehoboth on 22 February 1686/7, daughter of John and Alice (______) Briant of Shalbourne. Both are buried in Old Rehoboth (Newman) Cemetery, Rumford (TAG 70:193–94, 203; RI Cems 63; see also BIRTH, DEATH, BURIAL, MARRIAGE, and COMMENTS sections, below). [While the foregoing genealogical data is presented in Register style, the embedding, grouping, and severe abbreviating of source citations are conveniences that depart from it. Sources are cited in full in KEY TO SOURCE NOTES, at the end of this sketch. The format below is patterned loosely after that used by Robert Charles Anderson in his Great Migration series.]

BIRTH: The earliest known record of William2 and his family of origin is that of their tenancy at Westcourt Manor, in the Wiltshire part of Shalbourne, beginning in 1608 (see RESIDENCES, below). The line separating Wiltshire and Berkshire bisected the parish, and the Hampshire border was/is only about four miles distant; it is therefore likely that he was born in one of these three counties. William2’s approximate birth year is calculated from his age, 33, as reported a few days before 2 May 1638 and recorded on that date in the passenger list of the Bevis, on which ship he and his family sailed to Massachusetts (TAG 70:193–94, 203; see also IMMIGRATION, below). William is named with his father in the aforementioned 1608 Westcourt Manor record (see RESIDENCES, below). The copyhold was reaffirmed in 1614 by cross-outs and insertions in the original, 1608 record, augmented by a margin note. Presumably in 1621, when the copy court roll was compared to the manorial court book, William2’s age, 16, was inserted in the original record in a space theretofore left blank (Westcourt Recs 7; Crookston). No record of his specific date of birth or baptism has been found, and any such date appearing in the secondary literature is a fabrication.

Jrcrin001 20:08, 11 December 2010 (EST)

William of Providence [12 December 2010]

Gene Zubrinksy in his Carpenter Sketches has the following regarding William Carpenter of Providence, RI.

BIRTH: In 1671, William Carpenter of Pawtuxet, in the township of Providence, gave to his sister [and only known sibling], “Fridgsweete” (Carpenter) Vincent of the English town and parish of Amesbury, “my dwelling house” and adjoining land there, both inherited from his father, Richard Carpenter (PrTR 5:323–25). In 1598[/9], Robert Carpenter of the adjacent parish of Newton Toney named Richard Carpenter of “Aymsbury” among his legatees; a Richard Carpenter, presumably the same man and William’s father, was buried at the latter place in 1625 (PCC 93 Kidd fol. 47; AmParReg.1:n.p.). It is therefore probable that William was born at Amesbury.

William’s birth year is roughly estimated above as “say 1610.” Say is based on less-precise data than about/circa, and in this case we have nothing better from which to infer William’s birth date than that of his wife, in late 1611. No record of the birth or baptism of William1 Carpenter of Providence has been found. Any specific date for either event appearing in the secondary literature (e.g., 23 May 1611) is either an invention or the result of confusion and should be ignored.

--Jrcrin001 20:00, 11 December 2010 (EST)

Baptist Movement [23 January 2011]

Paragraph removed - reason.

'Plymouth Colony Records show him as a sympathizer of the newly emerging Baptist movement in America. The portrait of him in Winthrop's writings, as well as the Plymouth Colony Records, present a man of intense religious conviction as well as compassion.'[6].

This is one of the passages from the Wikipedia page for which there is no basis; every appearance of it should be deleted. The William Carpenter sympathetic to the Baptists was William1 of Providence, but even he (despite claims to the contrary) probably was not a founder of the church there. (The only hint as to the religious ideas of William1 of Providence is in a letter from Roger Williams to the General Court at Boston, in which he and his father-in-law, William Arnold, are depicted as "“very far also in religion from you, if you knew all.”) Winthrop's writings don't mention William2 of Rehoboth, and there's nothing in Plymouth Colony records concerning the intensity of his religious conviction or other personal qualities. Per Gene Zubrinsky.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth_Carpenter_family#Church

Jrcrin001 14:58, 23 January 2011 (EST)