The Carpenter Family

In 1841, Thomas, Richard, Mary, and Joseph (recorded as an 11-day old infant) were living in Forthay with their parents and elder brother George, in a cottage, rented from Eli Mason, that has since disappeared. Their father, Thomas, was a labourer and Elizabeth their mother, was paid by the Vestry to clean the church. Their younger brother, Stephen Shell (his mother’s maiden name) was born 2 years later.

Joseph died in 1844.

Mary, aged 13, was convicted to 3 months hard labour on 21st June 1847, for stealing 2 silver spoons. The next year, she was convicted for stealing 5 yards of cotton gingham from Abraham Tilley and was transported to Van Diemans Land (Tasmania) for 7 years, arriving there in 1849. It is possibly Sarah who is recorded on the Australian Death records as dying in Melbourne in 1886, aged 52.

Thomas married in 1858, aged 24. In the ’61 Census, both he and his wife were listed as agricultural labourers. Hannah, his wife, was a decade older than Thomas, and already had four illegitimate children when they married. Thomas and Hannah had four more children and lived in Cam until Thomas died, before the 1901 Census.

Richard lived with his mother and brother George in Nibley and Dursley, working as an agricultural labourer. In 1891 he is recorded as living alone in Millend, North Nibley. I can’t find a record of him in the 1871 Census, and there is a possibility that he may have been fighting in the American Civil War. When he was 58, he married Emma Hull, a widow of the same age in Wotton under Edge, where they are both living in 1901. In 1911, aged 69, he is living in Dursley Workhouse, listed as single (?) and a stonebreaker and where he died, aged 74.