Ancestors

Alice Carpenter

She was betrothed at Leiden on 4 May 1613 as Els Carpenter, born in England, a maid, and married Edward Southworth there on the 28th. Two sons were born to them, Constant and Thomas. Her husband died in England about 1621.

She came out in the Anne in 1623 and married William Bradford on 14 August, soon after the ship landed, and was the governor's wife for the next thirty four years. Her two Southworth boys stayed behind in England and came over in 1628, probably with her sister Juliana and George Morton, which is when the Plymouth Company's accounts pay four shillings and fourpence a week for eleven weeks of Constant's passage and diet.

Her own will was made on 29 December 1669 and exhibited at Plymouth on 7 June 1670 on the oaths of Nathaniel and Ephraim Morton. She leaves her sister Mary Carpenter the bed she is lying on with its furniture, a pair of sheets, a good cow, a yearling heifer and a young mare. She leaves her son Constant Southworth all her purchase land at Paomet. She divides her sheep between Constant and her son Joseph Bradford on one side and Captain William Bradford on the other. She gives seven pounds to her granddaughter Elizabeth Howland, the daughter of her dear son Captain Thomas Southworth deceased, for the use of Elizabeth's own son James. She gives her servant maid Mary Smith a cow calf, and she is careful about when: the next spring if she dies this winter, and shortly after her decease if she does not.

Then she signs it. The A marke of Alice Bradford senr.

The inventory counts eight cows, two yearlings, a two year old steer, a four year old steer, a heifer, an old horse with three mares, seventeen sheep and two lambs, furniture in the new parlour chamber and the outward parlour chamber and the old parlour chamber, and in the study ninety volumes, priced one by one.

If Alice Carpenter is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Alice Carpenter (1590-1670)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/alice-carpenter-1590-1670-15519a.