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Rehoboth Carpenter family

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William Carpenter, the father, William Carpenter, the son, and the son's family on the passenger list of the sailing ship Bevis from 1638.

The Rehoboth Carpenter family is an American family that helped settle the town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts in 1644.[1] The genetic research on this family is notable.

The first immigrant and founder of this line was William Carpenter (generation 1) (b. c1575 in England), his namesake son, William Carpenter (Generation 2) (c1605 in England -1658/9 Rehoboth, Bristol, MA), and the son's wife and children (then numbering four) arrived on the Bevis from Southampton, England, in 1638. Nothing more is known of the father, William, in Massachusetts and he is presumed to have perished either in passage, shortly after arriving in the new world or, less likely he returned to England. William Carpenter (Gen. 2) is buried in the Newman Congregational Church Cemetery with a simple field stone marked with a "W. C.".[1]

William Carpenter, (Gen. 2) first appears in New England records in 1640, as a resident of Weymouth, Massachusetts. He was among the founders (at Weymouth in late 1643) of the Plymouth Colony town of Rehoboth (settled 1644). His son, William (Gen. 3) Carpenter (b. 1631 in England - 1702/3 Rehoboth, Bristol, MA), was for many years Rehoboth town clerk, by virtue of which his name—not that of his father—appears with some frequency in Plymouth Colony records, in association with a number of local vital-records lists that he certified and forwarded to colony authorities. The name William Carpenter appears in copious Plymouth Colony records and in the writings of John Winthrop and in other public records over the generations.[2]

Three Carpenter family houses in Rehoboth are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: Christopher Carpenter House, Col. Thomas Carpenter III House, and Carpenter House (Rehoboth, Massachusetts)|Carpenter House.

English ancestry

St. Michael and All Angels, Shalbourne

These Carpenters previously lived in Shalbourne, an English parish near Hungerford that straddled the boundary between Wiltshire and Berkshire. The Rehoboth Carpenters' English origins were obscure until the discovery of Bishops' Transcripts of Shalbourne parish records containing marriage, baptismal, and burial records pertaining to them. Among these records is that of William (Senior) Carpenter's marriage in 1625 to Abigail Briant of Shalbourne. A search of Westcourt Manor tenants' records reveals William Carpenter (Gen. 1) as a copyholder at Westcourt Manor in Shalbourne from 1608 to late 1637.[1]

Immigrant family

William Carpenter (Gen. 1) born about 1575 in England. He died after 2 May 1638 (Bevis passenger list) and certainly before 1644 when his son, William settled in Rehoboth. He was of Newtown, Shalbourne Parish, Wiltshire, England, by 1608, when he became a copyholder (semipermanent leaseholder) at Westcourt Manor (Westcourt Recs 7). Shalbourne, completely in Wiltshire since 1895, previously it straddled the line separating Wiltshire and Berkshire, with Westcourt comprising the Wiltshire part of the parish (Shalbourne Map); the Hampshire border was/is about four miles away. It is likely that William was born in one of these three counties. William's renewal of his Westcourt tenancy on 22 June 1614 gives his age as 40 (Westcourt Recs 7). The passenger list of the Bevis, the ship on which he left England, is dated 2 May 1638 and states William's age as 62 leading to an estimate of about 1575 for his birth.[3]

His son William Carpenter (Gen. 2) was born about 1605 in or of Wiltshire, England. He died 7 February 1658/1659 in Rehoboth, Bristol, MA. He married Abigail Briant, daughter of John & Alice, on 28 April 1625 in Shalbourne Parish, Berkshire, now in, Wiltshire, England.[4]

Their children:

  • John Carpenter - Christened 8 Oct.1626 in Shalborne Parish - Bevis passenger
  • Abigail Carpenter - Chr. 31 May 1629 in Shalborne Parish - Bevis passenger
  • William Carpenter (Gen. 3) - Chr. 22 Nov. 1631 in Shalborne Parish - Bevis Passenger
  • Joseph Carpenter - Chr. 6 Apr. 1634 in Shalborne Parish - Bevis Passenger
  • Samuel Carpenter - Chr. 1 Mar 1636/1637 d. 20 Apr 1637 both in Shalbourne Parish.
  • Samuel Carpenter - b. abt. 1638 of, Weymouth, Norfolk, MA - his mother was probably pregnant on the Bevis
  • Hannah Carpenter - b. 3 Apr. 1640 Weymouth, Norfolk, MA
  • Abiah Carpenter - b. 9 Apr. 1643 of, Weymouth, Norfolk, MA

Church

Newman Congregational Church and Carpenter graves

There is no record to confirm it, but it is said that certain Rehoboth Carpenters were among the founders of the Rehoboth (now Newman) Congregational Church (See: Newman Congregational Church and the Newman Cemetery)[5][6]

This much we know: William (Gen. 2) Carpenter's admission as a Massachusetts Bay Colony freeman from Weymouth in 1640 required church membership. The minister at Weymouth was Rev. Samuel Newman, most of whose congregation accompanied him to Rehoboth, where he was also the minister. William (Gen. 2) Carpenter was one of Rehoboth's fifty-eight original proprietors and is buried in Old Rehoboth (Newman Church) Cemetery. (While records of the time provide no direct evidence as to the religious affiliation of William (Gen. 2) Carpenter of Rehoboth, he was certainly not a Baptist, even though other Carpenters in New England were. In this regard, he is sometimes confused with William Carpenter (Rhode Island) of Providence and others.[7][8]

Notable Carpenters of the Rehoboth Carpenter family

Through his five sons, Capt. William Carpenter became known as the father of "The Family of Heroes." Over 300 of his male lineal descendants served America in the Revolutionary War. No other American family can make such a claim. [9]

Relationship with other New England Carpenter families

William Carpenter of Providence, son of Richard Carpenter of Amesbury was a reportedly a first cousin of William Carpenter of Rehoboth, son of William Carpenter of Shalbourne, England. In addition he supposedly was closely related to Alexander Carpenter of Wrington, Somersetshire, and Leiden, Netherlands, of whom his four married daughters were in the Plymouth Colony in the early 1620s. This derives from Amos B. Carpenter’s[1] unsupported claim that Richard of William of Shalbourne, and Alexander Carpenter were brothers. No genealogical evidence has been found even hinting at a link between the Wrington Carpenters, on the one hand, and either of the other two afore-mentioned families, on the other; a connection is highly improbable. Traditional genealogical research methods provide good reasons to doubt also that Providence William and Rehoboth William were closely related.[13]

Results of recent genetic (Y-DNA) testing coordinated by the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project support this conclusion: Based on a number of 67-marker tests, “we can state with 95% confidence that the most recent common ancestor of the two groups [descendants of the Providence and Rehoboth Carpenters, respectively] was more than 2 generations before the immigrants and less than about 20. Therefore, the DNA testing has very nearly ruled out the often-repeated claim that the Williams were first cousins. The most likely estimate is about 7 generations, but that is a very rough estimate, and the 95% confidence interval is a more reasonable description of what the DNA is telling us” (Carpenter Cousins).[14]

Genetic research

The Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project[15] has conducted Genealogical DNA testing on twenty males with genealogical paper trails as of 2010. Nine males who have incomplete genealogical data but match genetically were placed in subgroup of Group 3.[16] These twenty nine males are genealogically and genetically descendants of the immigrant William Carpenter (born about 1605) who settled in Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts from England. By a process of genetic triangulation, their common ancestor's Y-DNA DYS markers were re-constructed. See table below.

The haplotype Y-DNA testing representative samples of member of Group 3 based on Single-nucleotide polymorphism or SNP testing reveals Haplogroup R1a1a1b1a. See also the 2015 ISOGG tree for the shorthand code of R-Z282.

Table 1 shows the reconstructed haplotype of William Carpenter (born about 1605) showing 74 DNA Y-chromosome Segments (DYS-markers).

Table 1. - William Carpenter (ca1605 - 1658/1659) reconstructed Y-STR haplotype
Y-STR Allele Y-STR Allele Y-STR Allele Y-STR Allele Y-STR Allele
DYS393 13 DYS390 25 DYS19 16 DYS391 10 DYS385a 11
DYS385b 14 DYS426 12 DYS388 12 DYS439 10 DYS381i 13
DYS392 11 DYS382ii 29 DYS458 15 DYS459a 9 DYS459b 10
DYS455 11 DYS454 11 DYS447 24 DYS437 14 DYS448 20
DYS449 32 DYS464a 11 DYS464b 14 DYS464c 15 DYS464d 17
DYS460 11 Y-GATA-H4 12 YCA-IIa 19 YCA-IIb 23 DYS456 16
DYS607 16 DYS576 20 DYS570 20 CDYa 33 CDYb 35
DYS442 14 DYS438 11 DYS441 14 DYS444 12 DYS445 11
DYS446 12 DYS461 11 DYS462 11 DYS463 11 Y-GATA-A10 13
DYS635 24 Y-GGAAT-1B07 9 DYS531 11 DYS578 8
DYS395a 16 DYS395b 17 DYS590 8 DYS537 12 DYS641 10
DYS472 8 DYS406s1 11 DYS511 10 DYS425 12 DYS413a 22
DYS413b 22 DYS557 15 DYS594 10 DYS436 12 DYS490 12
DYS534 13 DYS450 8 DYS481 24 DYS520 21
DYS520 21 DYS617 12 DYS568 11 DYS487 13 DYS572 11
DYS640 11 DYS492 12 DYS565 13
Notes: Differences between Group 2 & Group 3 are:

DYS464a=16 for Group 2 & DYS464d=17 for Group 3.
DYS413a=21 for Group 2 and DYS413a=22 for Group 3.
DYS635=23 for Group 2 and DYS635=24 for Group 3.

Carpenter ancestry of 3 presidents

Rehoboth Carpenter family descendants in America have played a part in American history, including the ancestry of at least three U.S. presidents - James A Garfield[17], 20th President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States (1989–1993) and father of George W. Bush, 43rd President.[18]

References and notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Carpenter, Amos B. A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the Carpenter Family in America, a.k.a. "The Carpenter Memorial", Press of Carpenter & Morehouse, Amherst, Mass., 1898), reprinted and duplicated by many organizations in print, CD, and DVD formats. Note: This 900-plus page tome was remarkable for its day, but many corrections has been made in the genealogies it contains over the last century. The best compiled corrections to this work and related lines is in the "Carpenters' Encyclopedia of Carpenters 2009", data DVD format.
  2. Bowen, Richard LeBaron. Early Rehoboth: Documented Historical Studies of Families and Events in This Plymouth Colony Township, 4 vols. (Rehoboth, Mass.: Rumford Press, 1945-1950).
  3. Zubrinsky, Eugene Cole. "William Carpenter of Newtown, Shalbourne, Wiltshire (Bevis, 1638)" (Ojai, Calif., 2009).
  4. Zubrinsky, Eugene Cole. "The Family of William Carpenter of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, With the English Origin of the Rehoboth Carpenters," The American Genealogist, Vol. 70 (October 1995), pp. 193-204. This work establishes the English origin of William Carpenter of Rehoboth (c1605-1658[/9]); identifies his wife, Abigail Briant; and revises their children's birth order.
  5. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html. 
  6. Now located in present day Rumford, Rhode Island (site of the original Rehoboth settlement). See: [History of Rehoboth, Massachusetts.]
  7. Savage, James. A Genealogical Dictionary of The First Settlers of New England Before 1692, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register - with two supplements in four volumes, Baltimore, Md., Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., originally published 1860-1862, Boston, Mass., reprinted with "Genealogical Notes and Errata" excerpted from The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, April, 1873, pp. 135-139. Corrected electronic version copyright Robert Kraft, July 1994
  8. Dexter, O. P. A Genealogical Cross Index of the Four Volumes of the Genealogical Dictionary of James Savage, originally published 1884, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. Baltimore, Md., 1965, 1969, 1977, 1981, 1986, 1990. Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 65-18541, International Standard Book Number: 0-8063-0309-3, Set Number: 0-8063-0795.
  9. Carpenter, Raymond George "The Family of Heroes"
  10. Alphabetical List of Officers of the Continental Army - C - Fifteenth Virginia - page 145. Carpenter, Benajah (R. I.). Captain Lieutenant of Knox's Regiment Continental Artillery, 10th December, 1775; killed at Long Island, 27th August, 1776.
  11. Carpenter, Amos. Number 793 on page 139. See in addition: Benajah Carpenter
  12. U.S. Senate Art & History site retrieved 2008. See also Francis Bicknell Carpenter
  13. Carpenters' Encyclopedia of Carpenters 2009 (DVD format)
  14. Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project
  15. "Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project". http://carpentercousins.com/carpdna.htm#toc. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
  16. "Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project - Table 1 - Group 3". http://carpentercousins.com/carpdna.htm#table1. Retrieved 2009-10-22. 
  17. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~smason/html/garfield.htm
  18. WorldRoots.com, Genealogy Archive. "Ancestors of George W. Bush" by William Addams Reitwiesner. Retrieved May 2009. Alternate website.

External links

Further reading