William Carpenter

Biography

For nearly thirty-five years, William Carpenter kept the town records of Rehoboth, then a larger settlement spanning parts of today’s southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island. He became town clerk in 1668 and, apart from an interruption in the early 1690s, held the office until his death. Surveying land, assessing taxes and serving in town government added practical responsibilities to the work of recording decisions.

William had arrived in Massachusetts as a child aboard the Bevis in 1638, travelling with his parents, siblings and paternal grandfather. His baptism had taken place at Shalbourne, a village on the historic Berkshire–Wiltshire boundary in southern England, on December 25, 1631. The family settled first at Weymouth, south of Boston, and then at Rehoboth. There, William married Priscilla Bennett in 1651. After her death in 1663, he married Miriam Sale in February 1664.

The two marriages produced a large household. John, William, Priscilla and Benjamin belonged to the first marriage; Noah was among the children of the second. William's will provided for children from both. It named Miriam as executrix and distributed property among eight sons and four daughters. One particularly workmanlike possession, a long crosscut saw, went to John, a house carpenter. Books also formed part of the estate.

William died on January 26, 1703. Miriam then carried out the settlement of his estate. A deed reproduced in the Carpenter genealogy shows her and John transferring to Daniel the right to have four acres laid out under a town land division. The document links the family inheritance to the same system of town orders, surveying and recorded property rights in which William had spent much of his working life.

His parents were William Carpenter and Abigail Briant in the family reconstruction; his death is placed at Rehoboth.