Sarah Hartwell (1726-1817) and Joseph Carver (1727-1786) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 20) Theme: "Travel"

For family historians, nothing can beat the thrill of travel to ancestral homelands! In the spring of 1999 my husband, my mother and I visited New England: so many graveyards, churches, memorials, libraries and historical societies. It was absolute bliss!

One part of the family we were looking for was our Carver line. My 7X great grandmother Elizabeth (Snow) Carver was one ancestor whose resting place we located during our travels in Massachusetts.

The author and her mother at Scotland Cemetery, Bridgewater, MA 1999

Stone for Elizabeth Carver who died in 1755

No matter how thoroughly we searched during our visit to Scotland Cemetery, we were unable to find Elizabeth's husband Joseph Carver (senior) who died in 1778. (Years later, we learned from his Find a Grave website memorial that there is no record of his having been buried here - nor apparently  anywhere else, for that matter!)

During our travels, we also visited the Foster, Rhode Island area where Elizabeth and Joseph Carver's son, another Joseph Carver and his wife Sarah (Hartwell) Carver (my 6X great grandparents) are buried at a very remote cemetery called the Hopkins-Ide Lot (also known as the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Foster #26). This is in a very rocky wooded area and is definitely not your typical well-tended New England town cemetery.

Photo 1999 by Elinor Bardahl - we were all enjoying our visit to the site.

Joseph and Sarah's Stones behind a rusted iron fence

Lots of rocks in the vicinity

Directions point out how tricky it is to find the cemetery location:  You enter Tucker Hollow Road from Route #6, then watch for a lane near the foot of the hill. Enter the lane in front of telephone pole #15 and follow the lane to telephone pole #2. The entrance is just before Pole #2 on the north side of the lane. Well, even before the era of GPS, we were somehow able to find it!

Seeing where the couple were buried might lead one to the mistaken conclusion that they lived a very quiet, isolated and rustic life.

Sarah Hartwell was born 26 March 1726  and husband Joseph Carver was almost exactly a year younger, born 23 March 1727. Both grew to adulthood in Bridgewater, Plymouth Colony where they were part of large extended families. They married there on 25 September 1746 when he was 19 and she 20. Sarah and Joseph raised a family of 8 children with the first four also born in Bridgewater. It was sometime after the birth of their fourth child in 1753 that they moved their family to Providence, Rhode Island where Joseph was a merchant.

When we visited Providence in 1999, we did not know that Joseph had once been a businessman there. As a result, our travels did not include looking for any evidence of Joseph there. Living all the way across the continent makes a return trip impractical, even before travel was essentially shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic this year. This means it is definitely time for some virtual travel through the use of maps and online resources. Although perhaps not quite so satisfying as an actual visit, this often provides even more context to the overall family story.

A map of downtown Providence from 1770 shows the prime location of Joseph's land there.

1770 Map of Buildings in Central Providence, R.I.

Close-up showing location of Joseph Carver property 1770

This can be brought forward into the 21st century through the magic of Google Earth showing this same street layout in the downtown business district. When we traveled to Providence in 1999, we did not know of Joseph's connection to this particular property or we would certainly have visited and taken our own pictures, but we would not have obtained this interesting aerial view!

Same area of downtown Providence with the wedge-shaped Turk's Head Building built 1913
Google Earth Street View Image

Front View of Turk's Head Building, Providence
Joseph's property would have been down the right side toward the back
Photo 24 June 2007 by Infrogmation
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5license

Obviously, it was nothing like this when Joseph had his business there. But perhaps even in its early days, Providence was getting too large for Joseph's taste and he decided to move his family and his business into a more rural area. In 1769 he purchased property at Scituate, R.I. and moved his family there a year or two later.  The census for Scituate in 1774 lists Joseph Carver with five males over the age of 16 and one under the age of 5. (Apparently there was no interest in recording the number of females at that time.) Joseph was obviously an enterprising man. He had an interest in a forge known as Hopewell which he eventually sold to his eldest son Oliver (my 5X great grandfather) in 1778.

Joseph signed up on 6 July 1775 to fight for the "Patriots" in the American Revolution and was discharged on 17 December of that same year. We don't know just how far he might have traveled while participating in the War.

But he did seem to have traveled around a bit after this, showing up in the records of Fair Haven, Vermont in 1782. He and others apparently petitioned the town for certain land rights there. However, a Remonstrance by a man named Benoni Hurlburt claimed that Carver was a "transient person from the State of Rhode Island" who had used Hurlburt's name on the petition without his knowledge and consent and against his interest. Perhaps Carver was retaliating since he and the other petitioners were complaining that they had themselves been unjustly treated and deprived of their rights without being informed or represented. (After looking at maps, my guess is that this land dispute in Fair Haven relates to the lands on which he wished to install his various undertakings referred to below.) 

Time for more armchair travel.

Google Earth map showing proximity of Fair Haven, Vermont to the Poultney River

Joseph established an iron works and lumber mill near Fair Haven on the Poultney River but across the state line in New York, naming the falls there "Carver's Falls". There is now a dam in the area, but pictures of the Falls can be found online at this site: http://www.newenglandwaterfalls.com/vt-carverfalls.html.

Hampton, N.Y. - also close to the Poultney River

No doubt this is the same iron works referred to in the History of Washington County, New York where a man by the name of Carver was reported to have built an iron forge in the northern part of Hampton in its very early days. Hampton is just 5 miles from Fair Haven, Vermont. Apparently the boundary between New York and  Vermont was disputed for many years and the proximity of these locations shows how it was likely all part of the same general business that Joseph conducted.  The iron was brought from the west side of Lake Champlain, probably along the river systems including the Poultney, and was used to make flat and square bar-iron for blacksmiths' use.

Joseph Carver died in Foster, Rhode Island just before Christmas in 1786. In addition to the iron works in New York, Joseph also owned land in Vermont and two farms in Foster and one in Scituate, R.I., all of which he left to his sons. Apparently wife Sarah was not happy with this and did not accept the legacies given to her in the will in lieu of her dower rights.

Joseph Carver's stone in the Hopkins-Ide Lot, Foster, R.I.
Photo by the author 1999

Sarah was living with son Oliver at the time of the 1790 census but later moved in with her daughter Sarah and son-in-law Timothy Hopkins. Sarah Carver died in Scituate on 27 June 1817 in her 93rd year.

Sarah's stone in the Hopkins-Ide Lot at Foster, R.I.
Photo by the author 1999

Their quiet resting places belie the varied and interesting lives they led, encompassing the American Revolutionary War and family and business life throughout Plymouth colony (Massachusetts), Rhode Island, Vermont and New York. Sarah and Joseph were well-traveled citizens of their time.

Resources:

Adams, Andrew Napoleon, History of the Town of Fair Haven, Vermont: in Three Parts; Leonard & Phelps, printers, 1870; available online through Google Books; pages 25-26 and 514.

Johnson, Crisfield, History of Washington Co., New York; Philadephia: Everts & Ensign, 1878; available online through Google Books; pages 363 and 369.