Katharine Carpenter Conklin (updated)

I found this scrapbook at the historical society on Tuesday. It was started by a 12-year-old girl, Katharine Carpenter, in 1903, and completed in 1908 when she was 17. It is priceless, probably one of the most uniquely fascinating artifacts I have ever had the opportunity to see in person. It is a very personal record of Katharine's experiences, thoughts, and dreams. The ephemera it contains - including letters, photographs, dance cards, playbills, advertisements, drawings, and even trinkets like pressed flowers, decorative napkins, and ribbons - are all captioned in Katharine's lively and playful voice. One of my favorite pieces is a pledge that Katharine made her friend sign: "Maude Fish will not tell anyone that Katharine Carpenter is going to try to go to the party at the Opera House on February 3, 1903. Signed, Maude Fish."

I hope to digitize the entire thing (somehow), but right now it's almost too delicate to handle. As you can see, the binding has broken and many of the pages are flaking away. I am currently exploring options for its restoration. In the meantime, I decided to look into the Carpenter family and see what I could find out about them.

There have been several Carpenter families in the village, but the question of which one Katharine belonged to is answered in the scrapbook itself. A pass allowing her to leave school early was signed by both her parents, T. Ellwood and Ella (Sutton) Carpenter. T. Ellwood Carpenter was the president of the Mount Kisco National Bank, which he founded in 1895. Ella Sutton Carpenter was a Quaker. They were married in 1885 and had three daughters, Helen (born 1887), Katharine (born 1891), and Mildred (born 1897). Their son, Herbert Ellwood, was born in 1885 and died as an infant.

Frank sent me this photo of the Mount Kisco National Bank, which was located on Main Street.

This was one of the family's houses, possibly the one where Katharine wrote and compiled her scrapbook. Aptly, it was on Carpenter Avenue.

Katharine first appears in the 1900 census, living with her parents, her uncle George Sutton, and their servant Ella Ryan. The same group was living together in the census of 1910.

1900 US Federal Census

1910 US Federal Census

Katharine attended high school at Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey (then known as Blair Presbyterial Academy). Her father, T. Ellwood Carpenter, died in 1917 at the age of 62. In 1925, she married DeWitt Conklin,an electric fixture salesman. In 1920, the couple was living with Katharine's widowed mother and her two sisters. Helen and Mildred both worked in a lawyer's office, Helen as an assistant and Mildred as a stenographer.

1920 US Federal Census

By 1930, Katharine and her husband had moved to East Orange, New Jersey, where DeWitt now worked as the president of an investment bank. Katharine's mother and sisters had also moved to East Orange. Mildred worked as a bank clerk, presumably in the same bank that her brother-in-law was president of.

Ella Carpenter died in 1935 at the age of 74, and Mildred died in April 1987 at the age of 90. Katharine died in December 1977 at the age of 86. I haven't yet been able to determine when Helen Carpenter died.

I also haven't been able to determine who gave the scrapbook to the historical society. Katharine doesn't seem to have had children, and neither of her sisters married or had children, so she had no nieces or nephews either. Who inherited her property? Was the scrapbook given to the society after her death or did she herself give it to the society when she was still living?

The Carpenter School

The photo on the left is from Glenette Forgea's scrapbook; I took the one on the right yesterday. According to Mrs. Forgea, it was the home of the first private school in the village, and was conducted by Mrs. Sarah (Fish) Carpenter around 1870. Mrs. Carpenter's husband, Stephen Carpenter, ran the Weekly with his twin brother, Samuel, and printed it out of this house.

1870 US Federal Census

Sure enough, the 1870 census shows Stephen and Sarah Carpenter living in the house with their six-year-old son, Mariah Fish (likely a relation of Sarah's, perhaps her grandmother), 15-year-old Ophelia Prier, Susan and Eddie Wood, and Stephen's twin brother Samuel. Both Stephen and Samuel were listed as "teachers," while Sarah was given no occupation, despite the fact that she apparently ran the school (I tend to refer to the 1870 census as the "sexist census" because it doesn't list married women's names, only "Mrs. Husband's Name," but it seems that it was sexist in other ways too!).

Old St. Mark's Fondly Remembered by Parishioners

Front (L to R): Francis Finch, Caroline Clark, Minnie Finch, Catherine Hall Metz, Marian Taylor Gibson; Back: Irene Harder, Maisie Hall, Anna Close Carpenter, May Finch Woodin, Helene Whitehouse Walker, Virginia Fox Patterson, Eleanor Towne Carey, John Close

 Excerpts from an article by Phyllis Cobbs originally printed in the Patent Trader, July 15 1976

"There were memories galore when nine lifelong members of St. Mark's Church met for luncheon recently to renew childhood friendships and record their memories of the old church on St. Mark's Place, opposite Leonard Park, where St. Mark's churchyard is still located. The congregation m oved to the 'new' St. Mark's downtown, opposite Jeff Feigel Square, in 1911 and the old structure was torn down a few years later, although its timbers, donated to the St. Francis AME Zion, lived on in that congregation's former church building on Maple Avenue."

"Mrs. (Helene Whitehouse) Walker's father, Henry J. Whitehouse, was St. Mark's senior warden for 57 years. Her earliest memories were 'fears of being seasick' when the family set out in a closed brougham on winter Sundays for services conducted by the Rev. Henry V. Chamberlaine."

"Efforts to locate the old rectory led (Mr. Hall's) sister, Catherine Hall Metz to recall that the site opposite the old church, where Conte's fishmarket now stands, was the home of a black family named Moseley who had been slaves before the Civil War. 'Mrs. Moseley,' Mrs. Metz remembered, 'taught piano to the Baldwins and others.'"

"Dr. (Egisto Fabri) Chauncey was 'very interested in social issues' at a time when the church was less concerned with such matters than it is today. His concern led eventually to the building of the new St. Mark's in a downtown location so that less affluent parishioners, who did not have horses and carriages, could walk to church."

St. Mark's Lunch: Front (L to R): Cynthia Baldwin Pease, Helene Whitehouse Walker, Mary Wistar O'Connor, Rose Hall, Catherine Hall Metz, Anna Carpenter; Back: The Rev. William C. Heffner, Virginia Patterson, Evelyn Whitehouse Cobb, Jane Nash, William H. Hall. The picture held by Rose Hall is the Rev. Egisto Chauncey.

"Anna Close Carpenter, whose trace of Irish brogue still betrays her family's origin, remembered that she and her elder brother John, who had a fine voice and sang in the old St. Mark's choir, rode to church in Abijah Merritt's stage, which plied between the railroad station and New Castle Corners ... 'The stage met the train and the service was held when the stage got there.'"

"With prompting from Mrs. Taylor, the oldtimers were able to agree that the old St. Mark's had a red carpet inside and that the outside paint was dark yellow, much weathered - there was a dissenting vote for gray. No one could remember what had happened to a bell, given to the old church by General Alexander Hamilton, grandson and namesake of the Revolutionary War statesman, who conducted services there as a lay reader in 1871-2 and again in 1880."

"Other major fixtures in the old church moved with the congregation. Three Tiffany stained glass windows, given by the Cowdin family, were moved with great care without mishap to the Chapel of the Resurrection in the new church as was the old altar. The baptismal font was also moved to the baptistry of the new St. Mark's."

"Going over the tapes, Mrs. Taylor hopes to fill in a 10-year gap resulting from the loss of the church minutes from this period. No one knows for sure what happened to the missing minutes, but one of the guests at the oldtimers' luncheon said, 'you know, I think perhaps we cut them up to make paper dolls in Sunday school.'"

Update: Philander G. Purdy and Sarah Carpenter

Graves of Deborah and Jacob Purdy

Update #1 (scroll to bottom for Update #2). I found this tiny snippet about Philander Purdy in an article from the North Westchester Times, August 11, 1911: "New Castle Corners History of Interest: Reminiscent Paragraphs by A. J. Q. tell about the Early History, Settlers and Business Places": "Now I mention Philander Purdy, who kept the wheelwright shop. He made wagons and ox carts, used locust hubs and hickory spokes. Some of his wagons are still in use today, with wooden axle-tree and iron linch pin."

Philander G. Purdy was the son of Jacob and Deborah Purdy. Sarah Carpenter was the daughter of Willet Carpenter and Mary Ann Miller. Philander and Sarah were married in the early 1840s and had three children.

29: Alfred and Sally Ann Carpenter Cronk

Alfred Cronk and his wife Sally Ann Carpenter had ten children, including one set of twins, between 1835 and 1857. Alfred and Sally were born exactly one month apart in the year 1814. She was the daughter of Josiah Carpenter, a wheelwright, and Jane Remington. He was the son of James Cronk.

In 1850, Alfred was a farmer. At age 35, the couple already had seven children.

1850 US Federal Census

By 1860, one of the Cronks' children - Antoinetta or "Annett" as she is called on her gravestone - had married and had a child. This child was born only a year after Alfred and Sally's youngest child, Oscar. It must have been strange for Antoinetta to have a child who was about the same age as her brother - or maybe not. In the nineteenth century it was a lot more common than it is today to see mothers and daughters pregnant at the same time.

1860 US Federal Census

Sally A. Carpenter Cronk died on November 12, 1869, and her death was recorded in the mortality schedules of the 1870 US Federal Census. These schedules really are fascinating. You can see all the people who died in the past year, how old they were, and what they died of. Sally died of typhoid fever. At age 55, she is actually one of the older people in this section of the list. Quite a few were children, as you would expect. Others were young adults. Causes of death included childbirth, cancer, consumption, heart disease, measles, and "inflammation of brain" - perhaps caused by head trauma? It's easy to imagine a nineteenth-century farmer like Mr. McDonald getting kicked in the head by a horse.

1870 US Federal Mortality Schedules

Meanwhile, the widowed Alfred Cronk was living with a family of Reynoldses. He died in 1887.

1870 US Federal Census

This was the obituary of Alfred Cronk:

Mr. Alfred Cronk died on Tuesday morning, Dec. 30th, at the residence of his son, Mr. Wesley Cronk, in this village. He was 70 years of age, and the cause of his death was apoplexy. He was a native of the town of Somers, but for some time past he has lived in Mt. Kisco. He was twice married, his first wife being a daughter of Mr. Josiah Carpenter, of Sing Sing, and his second wife was a Mrs. Barnes, of New Castle. He leaves five sons and two daughters (all children by his first wife) - William and Wesley (twins), John, and Carpenter Cronk; Oscar, who lives in New York; Emma, wife of Wm. Van Wyck; and Tillie, wife of Wm. Avery, of South Salem. 

What about the Cronks' children?

Amy J. Cronk was born 1835.

Antoinetta Cronk, who was born in 1838, married George Schesler and had a son, George. Sadly, she died in 1866 at the age of 28. Her gravestone gives her name as "Annett" Cronk, wife of George Schesler. Due to the difficulty the census-takers had with the name Schesler (the 1860 census-taker spelled it "Chesley") I've had a hard time tracking down George and George Jr. after Antoinetta's death.

Grave of Antoinetta or Annett Cronk Schesler

Charles W. Cronk, born in 1841, was a shoemaker. On October 2, 1861, he enlisted in the 59th New York Infantry Regiment, Company I. He was wounded in the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, and thereafter went missing from the hospital where he was taken. He died on December 1, 1865, and his gravestone reads "Our Brother."


Andrea Cronk was born around 1842.

John A. Cronk, born in 1843, enlisted in the Civil War a year after his brother did, at the age of 18. He joined the 6th New York Heavy Artillery Regiment and was appointed a corporal in 1865.

After the war, John first worked as a farm hand, then as the superintendent of Oakwood Cemetery for more than 20 years. He married a woman named Maria, and they had two children.

John and Maria's son George Irving Cronk, who was born in 1879, was a sheet metal worker, as was his son Frank. I wonder if he worked for or with my great-grandfather, who owned a sheet metal shop in the same town, and incidentally was born the same year.

William Cronk was born in 1849.

Wesley Mortimer Cronk was William's twin. He married Esther Mead Banks in 1867, and they had eleven children, only seven of whom were living in 1900. Wesley worked in a shoe factory and later as a house painter. In 1903, Esther died, and in 1905, Wesley married Hannah, a widow whose only child had died. In 1910, Wesley's son Wesley Mortimer Cronk Jr. filed a patent for a combined elevator cage and scale. Wesley Jr. also had a son Wesley Mortimer Cronk, an engineer who died in 2007. You can read Wesley Cronk III's obituary, which states that he was predeceased by his son Wesley Mortimer Cronk IV.

Carpenter J. Cronk was born in 1852 and also worked in a shoe factory. He married a woman named Matilda and had a daughter, Eliza. He died in 1897.

Matilda Cronk was born in 1853 and married William Avery.

Oscar Cronk was born in 1857.

Most popular names
Wesley Mortimer (4)
George (3)
William (2)

Surnames used as first names: Wesley Mortimer Cronk (x4), Everett M. Cronk, Carpenter J. Cronk

1. Alfred Cronk (1814-1887) m. Sally Ann Carpenter (1814-1869)
1. Amy J. Cronk (1835-)
2. Antoinetta Cronk (1838-1866) m. George Schesler (1834-)
1. George A. Schesler (1858-)
3. Charles W. Cronk (1841-1865)
4. Andrea Cronk (1842-)
5. John A. Cronk (1843-) m. Maria (1850-) in 1866
1. Frank V. Cronk (1876-1937)
2. George Irving Cronk (1879-1959) m. Jennie G. Reynolds (1879-1960) in 1900
1. Frank G. Cronk (1901-1961) m. Gladys Dakin (1907-)
1. Douglas Cronk (1937-)
2. John Cronk (1939-)
2. Lela L. Cronk (1904-1964)
3. Douglas Cronk (1913-2003) m. Violet Beard (1912-2007)
6. William Cronk (1849-)
7. Wesley Mortimer Cronk (1849-) m. (1) Esther Mead Banks (1851-1903); (2) Hannah (1851-) in 1905
1. Gertrude Cronk (1873-)
2. Bertha Cronk (1875-)
3. Mildred E. Cronk (1877-)
4. Wesley Mortimer Cronk (1879-1934) m. (1) Ada R. (1879-); (2) Elizabeth M. Wolder (1893-)
1. Leonard Turner Cronk (1900-1957) m. Lillian Rausch (1905-)
1. Allen Cronk (1933-)
2. Ralph Cronk (1935-)
2. Everett M. Cronk (1907-) m. Elizabeth A. (1908-)
3. Margaret E. Cronk (1923-)
4. Wesley Mortimer Cronk (1926-2007) m. Frances
1. Wesley Mortimer Cronk
5. Myra Cronk (1883-)
6. William W. Cronk (1886-) m. Elizabeth Wall (1891-)
1. Kenneth Cronk (1917-)
2. Elizabeth M. Cronk (1920-)
7. Amy K. Kronk (1887-)
8. Carpenter J. Cronk (1852-1897) m. Matilda (1853-)
1. Eliza Cronk (1874-)
9. Matilda Cronk (1853-) m. William Avery
10. Oscar Cronk (1857-)

13: Gilbert, Mary, and Oscar Carpenter

Grave of Gilbert, Mary, and Oscar Carpenter

Here is something I haven't seen before in this project: a triple gravestone. That is, there are three people commemorated by this stone: Gilbert Carpenter, his wife Mary A., and their son Oscar. The stone itself is a bit of a mystery. Both Gilbert and Oscar died in 1873, and Mary died in 1898. Surely Gilbert and Oscar were not without a tombstone for 25 years. Did Mary have the tombstone made for all three of them, with her death date added later? Or did this later tombstone replace one or two earlier ones? There's also the strange fact that the stone sits rather crookedly on its base. Is it a replacement for a damaged stone or stones, perhaps created years after Mary's death?

I'll have to return to the cemetery soon to make sure I'm not missing any other tombstones. Sometimes a family in which each member had his or her own stone also had a stone commemorating several of them. Usually, however, these family stones were much larger than a regular stone and had the family's name prominently displayed (such as the Stanton family stone).

Here is Gilbert Carpenter in 1850 as a farmer of 25 living in his parents' house. I'm sorry to say that this is what the census looks like. Fortunately, it's been transcribed, I'm not sure how - perhaps the black stuff is a problem with the copy or it happened after the transcription, I don't know. But in any case it shows Gilbert living with his father, Gilbert Sr., his father's wife Anna, eighteen-year-old Amy Wonder, and eleven-year-old Sylvia Vail.

1850 US Federal Census

Gilbert Sr. was significantly older than Anna (60 to 40). This is why I hesitate to call her Gilbert Jr.'s mother; she would have been 15 when he was born, which is possible, but I think it's more likely that she was his stepmother. The two girls might have been her daughters from a previous marriage or marriages.

Ten years later, Gilbert was married to Mary and they were living with their nine-year-old son Oscar and a nineteen-year-old named Willett H. Carpenter. Gilbert was a farmer.

1860 US Federal Census

In 1863, 37-year-old Gilbert was drafted in the Civil War along with some other local Carpenters, a Cronk, a Cornell, and a Crosby. My favorite, of course, is Purdy Carpenter. I love when the old families of this area use their old family surnames as first names for their sons.

US Civil War Draft Registrations Records June 1863

I can't find any of the Carpenters in the 1870 census, which is unfortunate, since it was the last census that would have listed Gilbert and Oscar. They both died in 1873 - Oscar in February and Gilbert in November.

By 1880 Mary, having lost her husband and son, had become the housekeeper to 85-year-old Thomas Wright. They shared the house with Philander Purdy, a wheelwright.

1880 US Federal Census

I found a legal notice in the Albany Evening Journal from 1854 that named Jesse M. and Caroline Carpenter as plaintiffs against a large group of defendants that included Gilbert and Mary Carpenter. I can barely read it except for this first part:

Westchester County Court
Jesse M. Carpenter and Caroline his wife, against Mary Ann Carpenter, Gilbert Carpenter and Mary Adelia his wife, Philander G. Purdy and Sarah his wife, William J. Underwood and Sarah his wife, Mary Emily Carpenter, Willet H. Carpenter, Hannah Elizabeth Carpenter, George O. Carpenter, and William Carpenter, defendants.

My best guess is that this is some sort of dispute over an inheritance - hence the multiple Carpenters. I have a hunch (but no proof) that Jesse M. Carpenter (born 1819) and Gilbert Carpenter (born 1825) were brothers. If so, then 1854 would be just the right time for their father, who was born in 1790, to die, leaving his heirs to battle it out. Assuming this is true, might Sarah Purdy and Sarah Underwood have been Gilbert Sr.'s daughters or stepdaughters?

So far, I've had trouble finding any evidence at all. It seems that all of Gilbert Sr.'s children except for Gilbert Jr. had moved out of his house by 1850, which is the first census to list all family members' names. Thus determining the relationship of all of these Carpenters is going to require further investigation.

Here is the family tree for now. If Oscar really was Gilbert and Mary's only child, and he was never married, that would explain why someone thought they should all share the same gravestone.

1.  Gilbert Carpenter (1790-) m. (1) Unknown; (2) Anna (1810-)
1. Gilbert Carpenter (1825-1873) m. Mary Adelia (1830-1898)
1. Oscar W. Carpenter (1851-1873)

12: Jesse M. and Caroline Carpenter

Grave of Caroline Carpenter

There are nine Carpenters buried in the cemetery, including Caroline Carpenter and her son, Charles. Strangely enough, Caroline's husband Jesse is not buried there.

Jesse and Caroline first appear together in the 1850 census, along with their one-year-old daughter Sarah and a thirteen-year-old boy named Charles H. Williams. Jesse was a farmer. Strangely, Caroline is listed as only 23 years old, when the dates given on her tombstone (age 70 in 1890) would have made her 30. This is a significant discrepancy. We'll have to see what the other the censuses suggest.

1850 US Federal Census

Here is the 1860 census. Caroline is now 33, which is consistent with her age from the 1850 census. Jesse, on the other hand, has either aged backward by 20 years or has fallen victim to the census taker's bad handwriting and/or hearing. He is certainly not 23 - not with a thirteen-year-old daughter.

1860 US Federal Census

In 1869, Jesse Carpenter held a surprise party for his two daughters, which was described in the Yonkers Statesman: 

Yonkers Statesman February 11, 1869

Of course there were Sarleses present.

It's 1870, and the Carpenters' ages have changed yet again. Now Caroline's age corresponds with the information given on her tombstone.

1870 US Federal Census

I tend toward the theory that Caroline was actually born in 1820 and that her age was incorrectly recorded (for whatever reason) on the census. First of all, ages given on tombstones are typically more accurate than ages given in the census. And secondly, if Caroline were actually 33 in the 1860 census, that would mean that her youngest child was born when she was 25. Even allowing for children's deaths, it seems much more likely that Caroline had her last child at age 32. 

Furthermore, the number of children Caroline had (3) is more in keeping with a woman who began reproducing in her late 20s or early 30s, rather than in her early 20s. If Caroline had actually had her first child at age 22, I would expect to see more Carpenter children - either in the census or in the cemetery, or both. After all, women in this time period typically had a child every two years, a pattern that is reflected in the other families I've researched. And Jesse and Caroline's children do seem to have been two years apart.

 Jesse and Caroline's youngest child and only son Charles died in 1871 at the age of 19.

Grave of Charles Carpenter

In 1880, Jesse and Caroline had only one child under their roof. They also had one laborer, Lewis Reynolds, age 20.

1880 US Federal Census

Caroline Carpenter died on August 16, 1890. This was her obituary in the local paper:

The Recorder August 22, 1890

Jesse M. Carpenter died in 1899. This was his obituary:

Mr. Jesse M. Carpenter, a farmer, living on the South Bedford road, died on Sunday morning, Feb. 5th, 1899, at about 4 o'clock, at the advanced age of 80 years. His age and paralysis were the causes of death.

He is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Sarah Jane Young, of New York City, and Miss Francenia Carpenter, who lived at home with him, and kept his house. He also leaves one sister, Mrs. La Boyteaux, of New York.

1. Jesse M. Carpenter (1819-1899) m. Caroline (1820-1890)
1. Sarah J. Carpenter (1849-) m. J. B. Young
2. Francenia Carpenter (1851-)
3. Charles Carpenter (1852-1871)