Juliann Carpenter and Manasseh Kempton

Here's a real treat: one of the only women to be given her own entry in Anderson's The Great Migration Begins. Sort of.

There's a whole other blog post to be written about the way Anderson organizes his volume by the male head of household, with women as the afterthought, tucked away in the "married" section. Even when women came to the Massachusetts Colony as single, independent people, they don't all get their own entry. Take Juliann. She and her three other sisters are hidden away under their youngest sister Priscilla's entry. It's not clear why the other sisters don't get their own independent entries, since all but one was in Plymouth before 1633. The last of the five sisters may also have been there, I just don't have the documentation to know at this point. They're probably discussed in more detail under their husbands' entries.

Anyway, here's the story of five sisters: Juliann, Agnes, Alice, Mary, and Priscilla, all daughters of Alexander Carpenter, who probably arrived as single women at Plymouth, or perhaps married men who then came to Plymouth, or both. 

Alexander Carpenter was from Wrington, Somersetshire. His five daughters were born between 1583 and 1598, although all dates are conjectural. He moved his family to Leiden by 1611, along with many of the other Puritans. Alexander never came to Massachusetts, but his daughters did. William Bradford wrote a letter to Mary Carpenter of Wrington, who was his wife Alice's sister, in August of 1644 or 1646 noting that the Carpenter sisters' mother had recently died and invited Mary to join them in Plymouth. Although Anderson doesn't lay it out in detail, I assume this means a) the Carpenter sisters were close kin to Alice Carpenter Bradford; b) the Carpenter sisters' mother, who is unnamed at least in Anderson's book, had also come to Massachusetts. Anderson notes that all of the sisters seem to have married a little later than was the norm for women of the time. This seems consistent (to me, at least) with their independence in coming to the colony on their own.

Juliann, our ancestor, was probably the eldest sister. She married George Morton. After she was widowed, she married Manasseh Kempton before May 1627. We are descended from their daughter, Patience Kempton. The second sister, Agnes, married Samuel Fuller. Alice married Edward Southworth and after his death William Bradford (yes, the one whose wife was her kin). Mary never married but lived until 1687 (Go girl!). Priscilla married William Wright and then John Cooper.

Is this a good time to point out how ridiculously inbred the Puritans were? By 1633, the English population of the Massachusetts Colony was still pretty small. Plus, they'd followed a type of chain migration, bringing their brothers and sisters, cousins, and in-laws to the colony once they'd settled in, narrowing their matrimonial choices even further. It's no surprise that we are descended from so many people who are listed in Anderson's book. If you have any ancestry from the early Great Migration period, you most likely are related to a significant percentage of the very small, very endogamous community that perched on the edge of Wampanoag territory.

Juliann Carpenter -- Manasseh Kempton
             - Patience Morton -- 
                 - Thomas Faunce -- 
                     - Martha Faunce -- 
                         - Mary Doty -- 
                             - Lemuel Bartlett -- 
                                  - Lydia Bartlett -- Thomas Kinney
                                      - Simeon Bartlett Kinney -- Olive Doane Kinney 

                                          - Thomas Kinney -- Mary Houghton Kinney
                                              - Julia Kinney Hancock -- Ernest Hancock




References:

Anderson, Robert Charles 1995 The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633. New England Historic Genealogical Society.