Otis Carpenter

Biography

Otis Carpenter combined farming with mechanical work and town service. The Carpenter genealogy calls him a mechanic and farmer and records that he held the town treasurership from 1813 to 1818. His household belonged to the Rehoboth–Seekonk area of southeastern Massachusetts, where the family records place the births of his children.

Born on the last day of 1769, Otis was a son of Zachariah and Hannah Carpenter. He was five when his father died in October 1775. Only a little more than two weeks earlier, his three-year-old sister Patty had died. His mother survived until 1790.

Otis married Mehitable Phinney of Barnstable, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, in April 1796. Their family grew over more than twenty years. Calvin, the eldest, became a mariner but died in 1816 at nineteen. George died in 1810 at two. Other children included Spencer, Luther, Nancy, Edmund, Sturgis Phinney, William, Hannah and George Otis.

Several of the children entered trades. Luther and Edmund became blacksmiths, while Sturgis became a house carpenter. His years as treasurer coincided with this period of raising a large family.

Otis died on August 8, 1840. Mehitable survived him for nearly twenty-four years. Their memorials, together with those of several children, remain at Newman Cemetery in present-day East Providence, Rhode Island.

Otis’s wife appears in the family record as Mehitable Sturgis Phinney. Their son Edmund was baptized on January 2, 1806.