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)