William CARPENTER^[1]

Abt 1575 - Bef 1640  (~ 65 years)

• Name	William CARPENTER  [2, 3]
  Birth	Abt 1575	Newton, Shalbourne, Wiltshire, England   [2, 3]
  Gender	Male
  Residence	1608	Newtown, Hampshire, England   [4, 5]
  Arrival	1638	Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America   [4, 5]
  	At 62, aboard the Bevis with son William and his family
  FamilySearch ID	L1QN-SZ1
  Death	Bef 13 May 1640	Weymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony, British Colonial America   [2, 3]
  Person ID	I594766934	Carney Wehofer 2024 Genealogy
  Last Modified	6 Nov 2023

  
  

  Father	William Robert CARPENTER,   b. 5 May 1545, Wiltshire, England d. 2 Nov 1607, Marden, Wiltshire (Engeland (Age 62 years)
  Mother	Elinor READE,   b. 1545, Downton, Wiltshire, England d. 25 Jan 1636, Marden, Wiltshire, England (Age 91 years)
  Marriage	27 Jul 1572	Clent, Worcestershire, England   [6]
  Family ID	F536729251	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Alice SWITHEN,   b. 1580, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England d. 25 Feb 1637, Shalbourne, Wiltshire, England o (Age 57 years)
  Marriage	14 Apr 1605	Warminster, Wiltshire, England
  Children	1. Eleanor CARPENTER   2. William CARPENTER,   b. Abt 1605, Shalbourne, Wiltshire, England d. 7 Feb 1659, Rehoboth, Plymouth Colony, British Colonial America (Age ~ 54 years)
  Family ID	F536729239	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	6 Nov 2023

  
  

• Notes

  Please see: http://www.carpentercousins.com/carplink.htm There was another William Carpenter who immigrated in 1635 and settled in Providence, Rhode Island. THIS IS A DIFFERENT PERSON: a different father and a different family. See Group 2 of the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project and the Carpenter Sketches. WILLIAM CARPENTER was born in England about 1575 and was still living a few days before 2 May 1638; he died probably in Weymouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony, or Rehoboth, Plymouth Colony. The identity of William's wife (or wives) has not been established. BIRTH: William was of Newtown, parish of Shalbourne, Wiltshire, England, by 1608, when he became a copyholder [semipermanent leaseholder] at Westcourt Manor. Shalbourne, completely in Wiltshire since 1895, previously straddled the line separating Wiltshire and Berkshire, with Westcourt comprising the Wiltshire part of the parish; the Hampshire border was/is about four miles away. It is likely that William was born in one of these three counties. The record of William's renewal of his Westcourt tenancy on 22 June 1614 gives his age as 40. 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. From these facts is calculated a birth year of about 1575. A William Carpenter, son of Henry Carpenter, was baptized about thirty miles north of Shalbourne in the parish of Great Coxwell, Berkshire, on 5 May 1576. About the same distance south-southwest of Shalbourne in Salisbury, Wiltshire, a William Carpenter, probable son of Thomas Carpenter, was baptized in the parish church of St. Thomas the Martyr on 1 May 1571. (The record of this baptism omits the father's name; however, St. Thomas records of John and Richard Carpenter, baptized 30 November 1572 and 17 December 1580, respectively, name Thomas Carpenter as their father.) Evidence that either of these persons was the eventual William Carpenter of Shalbourne has not been found. DEATH: The latest known record of William is the aforementioned Bevis passenger-list entry of 2 May 1638. His namesake son, William Carpenter, settled at Weymouth, probably in 1638 and certainly before 13 May 1640, when he was admitted as a freeman there. That his father William was not also made a freeman at this time was probably due either to his having died or to his station, which was modest when considered apart from his son's. MARRIAGE: William's having emigrated only three months after the death of Alice Carpenter, who was buried in Shalbourne on 25 January 1638, might be interpreted to suggest that she had been his wife (though not necessarily son William's mother); it is possible, of course, that she was an unmarried sister or daughter. A William Carpenter married Alice Swithen in St. Denys Church, parish of Warminster, Wiltshire, 14 January 1605. "Luis" [Louise?] (not Lillis, as indexed at familysearch.org) Carpenter, daughter of William Carpenter, was baptized at Warminster St. Denys 26 December 1607 and was buried there 11 August 1609. By the latter date, William had been in Shalbourne for more than a year. It is possible that the child had been returned from Shalbourne for burial, but available records fail to support such a hypothesis. Two other Warminster marriages in which the groom was named William Carpenter preceded the aforementioned one: on 2 December 1596, William Carpenter married Elinor Hunt, whose burial almost certainly occurred on 22 September 1597; on 11 July 1603, William Carpenter married Jane [Edwards]. Elizabeth, daughter of William (and presumably Jane) Carpenter, was baptized in Warminster on 26 October 1604 and probably married Richard Whittaker there on 9 April 1632. The only William Carpenter whose Warminster baptismal date raises the possibility that he married either or both Jane Edwards and Alice Swithen (but not Elinor Hunt) received the sacrament on 25 November 1582 as the son of Hugh Carpenter. While the man of that name, buried in Warminster 19 December 1616, might well have been the husband of Alice (Swithen), no ancillary records are found to verify it. (Baptized in Warminster 19 December 1562, William Carpenter "of the Laynes," hamlet of Bugley, was buried in Warminster 27 March 1625; on 29 January 1582, he had married there Dorothie Batt, who survived him. No Warminster baptismal record of a William Carpenter is any nearer to 1575 (William's calculated birth year) than that of 1582, above. The foregoing facts neither confirm nor refute that Alice Swithen was the wife of William of Shalbourne, but they tend toward the latter. It should be remembered that his relationship to the Alice Carpenter buried there is uncertain. But even if we accept for argument's sake that she was his wife, the only evidence pointing toward her having been the former Alice Swithen is matching, popular forenames; relative proximity of Shalbourne and Warminster (36– 40 miles); and a marriage date compatible with the approximate birth year (1605) of William Carpenter's only known child. A William Carpenter married at St. Thomas the Martyr, Salisbury, Wiltshire, 18 April 1605, Mary Bath (not Batt). Christopher Batt, a tanner of Salisbury, Wiltshire, was one of the Carpenters' fellow passengers on the Bevis. Records of the Batt family of Salisbury indicate that he and a Mary Batt of appropriate age (baptized at St. Thomas on 7 August 1584, daughter of Richard and Agnes (Danyell) Batt) "would be no more than distant cousins". It seems likely that this William Carpenter had been the infant of that name baptized at St. Thomas on 1 May 1571, and that he remained a Salisbury resident. Evidence that Mary Bath was the eventual wife of William Carpenter of Shalbourne has not been found. IMMIGRATION: William, with son William and the latter's family, embarked at Southampton, Hampshire, on the Bevis. The preamble to the ship's passenger list indicates that by 2 May 1638 "they [had been] some Dayes gone to sea." They landed probably at Boston (the point of all but a handful of Bay Colony arrivals) in June or July 1638 (the average ocean crossing took five to eight weeks). RESIDENCES: He was living at Newtown by 1 June 1608 and until at least about 18 September 1613; on the latter date a new family assumed tenancy of the parcels previously leased by the Carpenters. The last Carpenter record at Shalbourne is that of Alice Carpenter's burial, in 1637/8. Although her place in the Carpenter family is uncertain, we may be fairly confident that the others were present in or near Shalbourne at this time. Amos B. Carpenter's claim that William resided in London prior to emigrating is completely baseless. As above, William was at Shalbourne by 1608. In 2004, John R. Carpenter of La Mesa, California, requested a search by Guildhall Library, London, of that city's Carpenters' Company freemen's lists (begun in the sixteenth century) and of various catalogs; no reference to a William Carpenter was found. Despite the Bevis passenger list's description of William and son William as "of Horwell"— that is, Wherwell, Hampshire (about 15 air miles south-southeast of Shalbourne)— the aforementioned Shalbourne records make it clear that he was at the former place no more than a few months, perhaps only a day or two. Apparently based solely on the absence of any record of William in Massachusetts, Amos Carpenter claims that William returned to England on the ship that brought him. There is no evidence of this, however, and no reason to suppose it. His having endured the rigors of the voyage to Massachusetts (assuming he completed it), it is doubtful that William, an old man by the conditions and standards of the time, would have opted to face, unaccompanied, the physical demands of a return trip. And to what would he have returned? William was his eldest (perhaps only) son and heir. Where better for this father and grandfather to spend his last years than in the company of those with whom he had come? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: considering his age (advanced), marital status (presumably a widower), and position in his family (almost certainly subordinate to his son), it is not significant that William fails to appear in Massachusetts records as a freeholder or town officer. OCCUPATION: The Bevis passenger list describes William as a carpenter. That his copyhold included not only a messuage (house and adjoining land) with a garden but also a small number of acres in nearby common fields, indicates that he was also a husbandman (subsistence farmer). CHILDREN: The only known child of William Carpenter is the son named with him in his record of tenancy at Shalbourne Westcourt and with whom he emigrated: the eventual William Carpenter of Rehoboth. (See also William of Rehoboth Life Sketch). The Carpenters' Encyclopedia of Carpenters 2009 main database's attribution to William of additional children through the alleged wife Mary "Batt" is baseless.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1111] compiled by James H Carney, Jim Carney. [S1160] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 2 Jan 2023), entry for William Carpenter, person ID M2HJ-YXC. (Reliability: 3). [S1166] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (https://www.familysearch.org), ((https://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 13 Jan 2023), entry for William CARPENTER, person ID M2HJ-YXC. (Reliability: 3). [S1160] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 2 Jan 2023), entry for William Carpenter, person ID L1QN-SZ1. (Reliability: 3). [S1166] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (https://www.familysearch.org), ((https://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 13 Jan 2023), entry for William Carpenter, person ID L1QN-SZ1. (Reliability: 3). [S1166] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, FamilySearch Family Tree (https://www.familysearch.org), ((https://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 13 Jan 2023), entry for Elinor Reade, person ID G4LJ-MQ2. (Reliability: 3).