Rehoboth Carpenter family

Nothing more is known of the father, William (Gen. 1), in Massachusetts and he is presumed to have perished either in passage, shortly after arriving in the new world or, less likely he returned to England.

William Carpenter (Gen. 2) is buried in the Newman Congregational Church Cemetery with a simple field stone marked with a "W.

1631 in England - 1702/3 Rehoboth, Bristol, Massachusetts), was for many years Rehoboth town clerk, by virtue of which his name—not that of his father—appears with some frequency in Plymouth Colony records, in association with a number of local vital-records lists that he certified and forwarded to colony authorities.

These Carpenters previously lived in Shalbourne, an English parish near Hungerford that straddled the boundary between Wiltshire and Berkshire.

The passenger list of the Bevis, the ship on which he left England, is dated 2 May 1638 and states William's age as 62 leading to an estimate of about 1575 for his birth.

He married Abigail Briant, daughter of John & Alice, on 28 April 1625 in Shalbourne Parish, Berkshire, now in, Wiltshire, England.

In addition he supposedly was closely related to Alexander Carpenter of Wrington, Somersetshire, and Leiden, Netherlands, of whom his four married daughters were in the Plymouth Colony in the early 1620s.

No genealogical evidence has been found even hinting at a link between the Wrington Carpenters, on the one hand, and either of the other two afore-mentioned families, on the other; a connection is highly improbable.