Returning to the Carpenter family, the will of William Carpenter mentions three nephews, John, Andrew, and William, but not Michael. This had always bothered me, and it still does to some extent.
William Carpenter wrote his will in 1745, and his purported nephew, Michael, was surely born by then, as he, Michael, had a son, Solomon, who was born in 1761. From various considerations, Michael was probably a teenager by 1745. Why didn't William Carpenter mention Michael in his will? This led me to wonder if Michael was really a son of John Carpenter, brother of William Carpenter.
The evidence supporting John Carpenter having four sons is the four-way division he made of his property. One part went to Michael.
The testimony of Richard Burdyne concerning the process of writing William Carpenter's will perhaps gives us a partial answer to this question. It does appear that William Carpenter's thinking processes were impaired. He had omitted his brother John until Richard Burdyne reminded him of the omission. One must then wonder why Burdyne did not remind William that he omitted one of his four nephews, for it would seem to me that the structures of all of the families were fairly well known to everyone in the community. This is the only answer that I can see but it does not entirely satisfy me.
Here is another Carpenter puzzle. Once, the list of communicants includes Michael Carpenter and his wife Margaretha. Four pairs of names away we have a Michael Carpenter and wife Maria. (This was Easter 1776.) Then on another occasion (in 1778), at the baptism of a slave child, one of the sponsors is "Marg. Carpenter Mich. Wife". The problem is, "Who is the Michael Carpenter who has the wife Margaret?"
At the slave baptism just mentioned, the mother belonged to "Old John Carpenter's Estate". This suggests that the John Carpenter who is said to have died in 1782 was already dead in 1778. What does the word "estate" mean? In this case, does it imply that John Carpenter was dead when the baptism occurred?
All of these dates and names have been taken from the George Smith translation of the German Lutheran Church Records (the church is now called Hebron). There are some other mysteries concerning the Carpenters, but this is enough to chew on right now.
(27 Dec 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.