Asa Carpenter

Biography

Asa Carpenter grew up in the family of Stephen Carpenter and Dorothy Whittaker. His childhood household suffered an extraordinary succession of deaths in October 1752, when five younger siblings died between the ninth and twenty-first of the month. Asa, born in 1736, was a teenager.

As an adult, Asa became a farmer at Cumberland, Rhode Island, near the Massachusetts border. His intention to marry Abigail Follett was recorded in February 1760, identifying him with Cumberland and her with Attleborough, Massachusetts; the Carpenter genealogy places the marriage itself in March. Their household crossed the same Rhode Island–Massachusetts family geography that appears repeatedly in these records.

The published genealogy traces a large family over the following decades. Among the children were John, born in 1774, Lydia, who died young, and Jesse. The account extends to Sally's birth in 1788, the year in which Abigail died. The records establish that overlap without explaining the circumstances of Abigail's death.

The family chronology places Asa’s death around 1810, more than twenty years after Abigail. His son John's household was already established by then.

Marriage intentions were published at Attleborough on February 5, 1760; the genealogy gives March 13 for the wedding itself.