William Carpenter’s Date of Death

I’ve previously written about William Carpenter’s date of death:

“William Carpenter wrote his will on 7 January 1836, naming his wife, Peggy, and children David, Bolivar, Humphrey, Henry, Benjamin, Jackson, Caroline, Aveline, Amy [Ann], Sally, and Matilda. He did not name, as some did, any child with which his wife might then be pregnant. William died before 15 June 1838 when the executor of his estate, Jacob Palmer, ‘returned into [Macon Co., NC] Court, the settlement between himself as Executor, and Lewis Vandyke, Alexander Palmer & John Howard, the Committe appointed by [the] court on behalf of the Estate.’ There is a gap in the court records from 16 February 1836 to 11 June 1838, right during the time when William died and court records might help narrow the date of his death.”

That quote came from a post in which I speculated on the parentage of Margaret Carpenter, b. ca 1840 in Macon Co., NC.

The reason his date of death is so important is because it pins down both the advent of his wife Margaret’s widowhood, when her legal status changed and allowed her fuller (legal) control of her own life, and the possibility of his fathering Margaret’s youngest child (or, in other words, determining the parentage of the younger Margaret Carpenter).

I’ve been working on my ancestors in WikiTree over the past few months. Last night, I wrote two sections in the biography of Margaret (McConnell) Carpenter, William’s wife, one about her widowhood, one trying to connect her definitively as the mother of the younger Margaret Carpenter.

This morning I woke up to the realization that I had missed an important clue in another record that might narrow William’s date of death further: a deed dated 27 February 1837 concerning the disposition of land owned by Margaret’s father, William McConnell.

The deed was signed by each of William’s living children, but it was also signed by the surviving spouses of those children.

Guess who was not a signatory to that deed?

That’s right. Margaret’s husband, William Carpenter.

Now, it’s perfectly possible that William was too sick to make the journey from the Tessentee area of Macon County (east of Otto on the south end of the county) to Franklin, the official county seat, a journey which would likely have taken several days in the best of conditions.

But it’s more probable that he had died by that time.

Shaving roughly a year and a half off his date of death may seem inconsequential, but it does more fully eliminate the likelihood that he fathered his wife’s youngest child prior to his death.