Stephen Carpenter

Biography

Stephen Carpenter, a son of Noah Carpenter and Sarah Johnson, was born in 1706. The Carpenter genealogy describes him as a farmer and shoemaker. He married Dorothy Whittaker on November 28, 1734, combining agricultural work and a trade with the responsibilities of a growing household.

Their early family history included repeated bereavement. A son named Stephen, born in 1735, died in April 1737. A second son given the same name died in December 1740. Another Stephen, born in 1740, survived; he is a different person from his father and the two boys who died.

The most concentrated losses came in October 1752. The published death records of Attleborough, Massachusetts, identify Mary, Joseph, Charles, Hannah and Dorothy as children of Stephen and Dorothy Carpenter. Mary died on October 9, Joseph on the thirteenth, Charles and Hannah on the fifteenth, and Dorothy on the twenty-first. Five children died within less than two weeks. The genealogy places them at ages ranging from infancy to childhood.

The surviving children included Asa, then a teenager, and Stephen. Another son, Charles, was born in September 1754 and received a name already used for one of the children who had died. The entries show a family continuing after repeated losses without supplying the parents' own words about what had happened.

Stephen also appears among the children named in the abstract of his father Noah's 1756 will. That document places him within the distribution of the older Carpenter household at a time when his own family had already endured its most severe recorded losses. His work as farmer and shoemaker, marriage, children and place in his father's estate provide the secure framework of his life.

The family record gives Stephen’s birth as July 23, 1706.