Alexander Carpenter

• Name	Alexander Carpenter  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
  Birth	of Wrington, Somerset, England   [6]
  Gender	Male
  Person ID	I16324	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of BJS, Ancestor of GFS, Ancestor of JTS, Ancestor of LDN, Ancestor of TWK
  Last Modified	17 Aug 2022

  
  

  Family	(Unknown wife of Alexander Carpenter)   d. Bef 19 Aug 1644
  Children	1. Agnes Carpenter,   b. Abt 1585   d. Bef 3 Jul 1615 (Age ~ 30 years) + 2. Alice Carpenter,   b. Abt 1590   d. 26 Mar 1670, Plymouth, Plymouth Colony (Age ~ 80 years)
  Family ID	F10214	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	15 Mar 2020

  
  

• Notes

  "'Alexander Carpenter of Wrington' was on 16 December 1600 witness at the Amsterdam marriage of 'Antoine Fetcher' and 'Jenneken Richeman'. He was at Leiden by 1611. In a letter of 19 August 1644 or 1646 to Mary Carpenter of Wrington, sister of his wife Alice (Carpenter) (Southworth) Bradford, William Bradford noted that the mother of the Carpenter sisters had recently died, and invited Mary to join them in Plymouth, which she soon did." [Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, citation details below, p. 314] Note that Mary Lovering Holman's 1919 Scott Genealogy, which Anderson cites as the best treatment of Alexander Carpenter, misdates William Bradford's aforementioned letter to Mary Carpenter, and thus implicitly Mary Carpenter's emigration, saying that Bradford's letter was written and sent in 1664, which would be seven years after Bradford's death. This error probably came from a too-hasty reading of the original article in which Bradford's letter was published, Frederic Kidder's "Letter of Mary Carpenter", The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 14:195, July 1860. Kidder was working from a copy of Bradford's letter made "a long time previous", and transcribes the letter's date as "August 19, 1664", but in a footnote he says "This is so in the copy, but it must be an error; probably the original read 1644 or 1646, as there is internal evidence that the letter was written around that time." Also note that William Bradford's letter of 1644 or 1646 says that, Mary Carpenter's mother having recently died, Mary is "in a solitary condition." From which it seems evident that Alexander Carpenter had died earlier.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1738] Lineage from Gov. William Bradford down to Sybil Chapin, by Howard Hurtig Metcalfe. [S1739] Mayflower Increasings: From the Files of George Ernest Bowman at the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants by Susan E. Roser. 2nd edition. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1995. [S1647] The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New York Historic Genealogical Society, 2004. [S4249] The Mayflower Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth, 1620 by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2020. [S2252] Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Volume 22, William Bradford by Robert S. Wakefield and Ann Smith Lainhart. Plymouth, Massachusetts: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2004. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.