Mehitable Sturgis Phinney Carpenter

Biography

Mehitable Phinney came from Barnstable, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and married Otis Carpenter in April 1796. The family line identifies Timothy Phinney and Temperance Hinckley as her parents, although competing research uses Perry for her mother and the maternal surname remains unresolved. The marriage brought her into the Rehoboth–Seekonk Carpenter community near today’s Massachusetts–Rhode Island border, where her children's births were recorded over the next twenty-three years.

Calvin, born in October 1796, was followed by Spencer, Luther, Nancy and Edmund. The family continued to grow with George, Sturgis Phinney, William, Hannah and George Otis. Baptism abstracts for Nancy and Edmund name their mother as Mehitable Finney, preserving a variant spelling of her surname.

The household experienced losses as well as growth. George died in August 1810 at two. Calvin, described in the genealogy as a mariner, died in March 1816 at nineteen. Mehitable's youngest child, George Otis, was born in 1819. Several of the surviving children later worked in farming or skilled trades.

Otis died in August 1840. Mehitable survived for nearly twenty-four years and died in July 1864. The cemetery transcription gives her age as eighty-seven years and eleven months. Her memorial is at Newman Cemetery, now in East Providence, Rhode Island, alongside the records of Otis and several of their children.

Her fuller family name is Mehitable Sturgis Phinney. The age recorded at her death suggests a birth around August 1776; family chronologies place it around 1776–1777.