Donations

The SmugMug subscription is coming due in a few days, and the website bill comes monthly. If you like this website and feel like helping out, just click on one of the MAKE A DONATION buttons in the website. That is connected to PayPal, so you can use your PayPal account or a credit card.

The website and all related services costs about $350 per year. That does not count the time I donate to update the site when there is new information to post. Any amount will help, so thanks in advance to those who decide to donate.

By default, I will thank you privately, but if you want your name in lights, I will be happy to thank you publicly on a SPONSORS page. Just let me know your wishes when you donate. I will also include a link to your web page if you like, as long as it is appropriate for this family oriented audience.

Alternately, if you prefer to send your donation the old fashioned way, you can go to the Contact Us page, and scroll down to see my Postal mailing address.

If you do not feel like sending in money, then please send in your stories, research, and photographs. This website is made to grow, so send it all in here and share what you have with the family. If you are interested, get in touch with me, and I can let you know how to go about helping out financially or otherwise.

Thanks in advance to all who decide to help out,

Joseph W. Carpenter
Your cousin and website administrator for:
http://www.carpenter-zimmerman.org/reunion/

Easy way to send photos, or other files

Hey everybody,

I have known about methods for sending large files, but they were usually pretty technical. Now there is one that is super easy. Nothing is foolproof, but they have done a pretty good job to make this as simple as possible.

When you need to send large batches of photos, or any type of files really, then I suggest you get an XDrive account from http://www.xdrive.com

XDrive gives you 5GB of online storage for free. That is enough for about 7 CDs worth of data, or a little more than one DVD. That is plenty for most things, or you can pay for more storage.

Once you have an account, and have uploaded the files you want to share, you can send a link to another person to go download them. So it is a great way to share files. You do not need to mail a CD, and you do not need to do all that much really.

If you have an AOL Screenname, then you can just use the one you have. Otherwise, you can sign up and get one for free.

Head over to http://www.xdrive.com and follow the instructions.

Now when you have photos to send to the Carpenter-Zimmerman.org website, you can just send me an invitation to the XDrive folder where they are stored and I will go download them.

Easy as pie. Well, almost. But still pretty easy.

-- Joseph William Carpenter
Webmaster and Forums Administrator
http://www.carpenter-zimmerman.org/reunion/

Website changes - Updated Reunions, News, Donations button

I have updated the Reunions page to reflect a wider scope for this page. The Reunion 2006 page has been archived.

I will announce gatherings that any of you might want to let others in the family know about.

I have re homed the Carpenter-Zimmerman News blog to a WordPress blog on my site. For now, it still runs inside an iframe on the home page. Eventually, I will fully integrate that design into the website.

One of the neato features of the new Carpenter-Zimmerman News page is the ability to allow users to control the font size. Now, if you don’t like the default, just click the A+ button to make it larger. Cool Eh?

In order to help you help me to finance this website, I added a donations button. This will transfer whatever amount you think is appropriate to my PayPal account. When I see a donation come in via this website, all of that donation will be earmarked to help pay a portion of the cost of operating this website.

Thank you,

Joseph W. Carpenter
Albuquerque, NM

News from Elsie about recent Neal Gathering in Branson

Looks like I hard about this a little too late for anyone else to get there. But I can still help share the stories and pictures of the event. Anyone with news or pictures from the Branson gathering, send me an Email and I will let you know how to get them to me. I know some new tricks for sending files.

: Joseph

I just got this news in from Elsie Minchey:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Silver Dollar City
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 14:35:53 -0500
From: Elsie Minchey
To: Joseph William Carpenter

Hello Joseph,

We just returned from Branson. Robert Arnold and Dorothy had a 65th wedding anniversary last Saturday. [Aug. 4th]

Bobby (Robert's son) and Steve Fausler (Frances son) own the Southern Oaks Inn in Branson, Mo and we filled the ground floor plus a few on the lower level. We used the Garden Room as a gathering place and there was [always] someone there to visit. The children enjoyed the indoor pool. Milton and Beverly, their two adult daughters and a son-in-law and four children were there. Joanna Neal Rask (Wilson's daughter) and husband and 3 of their children were there. All of the Neal brothers and spouses and Frances were there.

There was plenty of entertainment in Branson so we had things to do besides visiting. A group of about 20 went out to eat across the street Friday night. Billy and LaNelle's two adult sons were there with wives. My brother, George and his wife Margaret were there; My sister Margaret and her husband Bruce and grand daughter, Krista, went too.

Of course Robert's two sons, Dick and Bobby were the hosts and their wives and children were there. Steve Fausler and wife, Sue, and three children were there. Jimmy, J. J., and Kaitlin. This is a beginning of the list and I can improve it later.

If I had known, I would have passed the word along so others could have joined us.

It was a fun time. Except Branson is not an easy place to get there. Some of the Pearsall group Iven and Ruby; Wilson,; James and son, Charles Arnold,; Billy's son, Larry and wife, Linda; Billy's other son, Howard and wife; flew to Tulsa, Okla. and rented a car for a 2 hour drive. It is a 10 - 12 hour drive for us.

We will try to send some pictures. Joanna is experienced at e-mailing photos. Maybe this would be a good time for me to learn ! Maybe this would be a good idea for the next Carpenter Reunion. Choose a destination that accessible and some of us could fly and there would be other entertainment for the younger generation.

I will forward this along to others and maybe between us we can get you some info. and if this ever reoccurs, we will get you advance information.

Elsie

Neal Family Reunion in 2007?

I have heard whispers in the wind, so to speak, about the Neal family having a family reunion in Branson, Missouri.

I already created a new forums discussion thread for the "2007 Neal Family Reunion" under "Family Reunions." Look for the FORUM link on the website and go check it out. If you have not yet signed up for the forum, then you will need to register. It is not a big deal, but we want to keep the forum in the family.

I do not yet have any details about time or date for the Neal gathering, but I have offered to help by creating a page on this website to post information about that reunion. I can also set up a special forum discussion where people can talk about this event.

The Neal family is a subset of the Carpenter-Zimmerman family, and as such it is very much appropriate to host that information here.

If you read this post, and know more about this, please do send me Email and let me know what is going on. So I can let others know through this website.

: Joseph William Carpenter
: Albuquerque, NM

PS: To anyone whe reads this:
If you are a Carpenter descendant of our George Zimmerman, and are planning your own smaller family gathering, please let me know. I will be happy to help promote that event. I will be working on a new "Reunions" page that will list any and all family gatherings that I hear about.

Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project Newsletter - July 2007

I received this from John R. Carpenter and thought some of you might be interested to know more about what is going on with the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project.

: Joseph W. Carpenter
: Albuquerque, NM

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project Newsletter - July 2007
Date:          Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:33:49 -0500
From:          John R. Carpenter

                                                                        29 Jul 2007
Hello,

The Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project is an all volunteer DNA project. We have tried to take a complex subject, explain it with the results we have obtained in a reasonable and readable format.

The International Society of Genetic Genealogy or ISOGG and FamilyTree DNA has given our Y-DNA Project some of the highest marks possible. Our project has been mentioned in numerous genetic genealogy talks as an example of a good surname project. It has been reviewed by organizations and chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and its sibling, the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) as a good example of what a surname project can do.

We have two outstanding co-administrators for our project.

I think we have been very lucky to obtain the services of John F. Chandler, Physicist, whose good wife was born a Carpenter, as our DNA guru. He has taken a basic web page that I set up and made it into the outstanding one we have today. He has written articles for the ?Journal of Genetic Genealogy.? I will not say much about his work in ?experimental tests of general relativity, planetary ephemerides; interplanetary radar ranging; astrometric optical interferometry?, since it gives me a headache just thinking about it.

We also have the services of Terry Lee Carpenter, Major USAF, who is our Southern Carpenter expert. Terry has an excellent genealogical and disciplined mind that took disorder and organized the southern Carpenter lines. This he has done so that others may benefit by his different articles and booklets on Carpenters. I can not say much about his USAF work other than the old joke, ?If I told you, I would have to kill you.?

These two are the backbone of the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project and are co-administrators. They keep it real and are very patient in explaining things to us.

Let me stress again, ?No one is paid for working on this project; all are volunteers.?

Our project is dependent on long range goals of people to willingly submit their Y-DNA in hoping to match a known group to confirm or to focus their genealogical research into a particular area of the Carpenter family.

Some wait for years before there is a match. Our first Group Administrator, now Titular, Jim Carpenter is one of them. Since September of 2002 he has never had a Carpenter Y-DNA match than those of his own immediate relatives that he has tested. He was the first member of the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project.

OUR ?project will grow as members encourage other Carpenters to submit their Y-DNA. There are many Carpenter lines yet to be documented and linked.?

Because of recent comments, some explanations regarding the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project may be in order.

First:
The main focus since 2003 has been the 25 DYS marker FamilyTree DNA or FTDNA test. We get this test at a group discount. Table 1 is our original results table. It has the first 25 markers from FTDNA. This test is what we recommend to all members participating in our project.

Over the years we have picked up members who did not test with FTDNA. Several have come from Sorenson Molecular Genealogy or SMGF and also from YSEARCH. SMGF uses some of the same and some different DYS markers which lead to the creation of Table 2. Table 2 also supports the additional 26-37 markers later provided by FTDNA. Hint, 26 to 37 on the left is mainly FTDNA and SMGF is mainly on the right on Table 2.

Table 3 has some overlap or duplicate DYS markers when compared to Table 2. Why? Because FTDNA brought out the newer 38-67 marker Y-DNA test. Again, it overlaps with some of the SMGF markers and Table 3 shows the FTDNA marker format.

Under the ?Results? section is:
?To allow viewing these results, without side-to-side scrolling, they are divided into separate tables. Table 1 gives the loci included in FTDNA's 25-locus test (the recommended test for this project). Since most participants have followed the recommendation and tested at least to this level, Table 1 is almost completely filled in. Table 2 gives the loci included in two kinds of extensions to the recommended test: first, loci 26-37 available from FTDNA and, second, eleven more offered by SMGF or Relative Genetics. Table 3 gives yet another extension: loci 38-67 from FTDNA, which include two of the Sorenson loci shown in Table 2. For ease of comparison, the results for these two loci are displayed in both tables.?

Each ID number on the different results tables are linked, when provided, to

For those interested in the most current results directly from FTDNA, we have the following comment below Table 3:

?Note: if your results have been reported to you by FTDNA, but do not appear in the above tables, they presumably were obtained since this web page was last updated. To see the very latest results, you may visit our alternate web page, which is maintained by FTDNA and always has the latest results. Unfortunately, this FTDNA page is rather slow to load and omits the results that were obtained from other sources (currently, about 15 haplotypes).?

The hyperlink to the alternate web page is:
http://www.ftdna.com/public/carpenter%20cousins%20%20dna

Second:
About 29% of the 160 odd members of our project are in Groups 2 & 3 who match 24/25. Groups 2 & 3 represent the Providence & the Rehoboth branches of the New England Carpenter family who immigrated to America in the 1630s.

?Groups 2 and 3 are so similar that they were at first thrown in together as one group. Even now, the separation between them is subtle, and so both groups are discussed together here. For the time being, the distinction is based on locus DYS464d, which is 16 for Group 2 and 17 for Group 3.?

Interestingly enough, about 29% of members (Groups 98 & 99) do not match anyone in the Carpenter Y-DNA project. A few days ago Group 18 became a new group because of a new member matched some one who had taken their Y-DNA test years ago. Our 18 organized groups (two or more matches or similarities in Y-DNA) represent about 62% of our project.

Many members who thought they would be in one group wind up in another group. Why? It is because of the diversity in names, changes in names, occupations, formal and informal adoptions and many other unknown factors in the ?Great melting pot? of the surname Carpenter and its related surnames like Zimmerman. To put in bluntly, not all genealogies are as accurate as we think from a genetic viewpoint.

It would be a great disservice to all Carpenter Cousins to balkanize or fragment this surname project. It is still new and many more members are needed. Only by seeing the whole can we see the forest from the trees.

Ask yourself this question, ?Have you submitted your Y-DNA?? Or ask yourself this question, ?Do I have a living male Carpenter relative that I can get a Y-DNA sample from??

If you have suggestions for the Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project web page or comments, please let me know.

Sincerely,

John R. Carpenter,
Carpenter Cousins Group Administrator
Please join our Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project at:
http://www.familytreedna.com/surname_join.asp?code=S82066




If at any time you want to stop receiving e-mails from your DNA Project Administrator, please go to the "Setup Preferences" section of your personal page and change the corresponding setting.

Improved privacy settings for our Photo Gallery

Happy news...

Some people, including myself, were dismayed to learn that the contents of the photo galleries were being indexed by Google and were thus appearing in searches that had little to do with our purpose in having a website. That is to say, we were concerned about attracting the wrong kind of attention.

I wrote my own letters to SmugMug, and encouraged others to send them Email as well to politely request more control over the privacy settings.

SmugMug listened, and they have added a feature to customize the permissions that affect the google search engine.

There are three options:

Hello World!, which means Yes Google will index everything.

Home Page only, which means Google will index the home page, but not the galleries or their contents.

No, which mean that Google is asked not to index anything.

Once I became of the new feature, I changed the setting to "Home Page Only" which will allow those who are legitimately looking to find the site based on the words I use on my home page, but not the contents and captions of all the galleries.

It will take as much as a week for Google to get the gist of this and "unindex" the pages they already found, such as the ones some of you mentioned to me previously. This is an excellent addition to the SmugMug service.

Previously, I would have had to 1) delete the gallery, 2) Recreate the gallery from scratch and make it private by using a password, and 3)Block others from linking to the gallery, which also prevents me from using the images on the website. These settings would have made the galleries all but unusable for our less technical family members, and extremely inconvenient for everyone else.

So, it was previously an all or nothing proposition, so I adopted a wait and see approach and started sending in feature requests for more control over privacy. They listened, and now we shall see how well Google also respects the new settings.

In a week or so, rerun that search for your relatives name and see if it still comes up.

: Joseph William Carpenter
: Albuquerque, NM

This blog will change very soon

I have decided to host the blog myself on my own web account, rather than continue to use LiveJournal. LJ is a great service, but I have found another blog software called WordPress, which will give me more control.

Eventually, I may be able to integrate the announcements into the actual design of the website to create a more seamless approach, in a similar way that I was able to fully integrate the Forum and partially integrate the Photograph galleries by customizing the headers.

When I do this, all of my previous announcements should transfer over and for the most part you should not notice much of a change, other than a change to the colors and theme.

This new software will also give me increased flexibility over how the blog is used. I may even recruit guest writers and other family members to post special announcements on their own...

If you are out there reading this, please send me mail and let me know that my efforts are welcome and useful.

Thank you all,

: Joseph William Carpenter
: Albuquerque, NM

Carpenter News: Admiral James Wisecup to command the Navy's newest carrier

Hey! Joseph! I just had another thought.
My son, Admiral James Philip (Phil) Wisecup is being transferred back to the states from a 2 year tour in Korea. He will be the Commander of Carrier Strike Force 7 in San Diego. He will have under his command the Navy's newest Carrier, The Ronald Reagan plus 8-9 other ships.

This may be an item of interest for the family website.

Jim Wisecup

ReCaptcha, Photos, Etc.

Hope all is well with you and yours. I would love to see some actual Genealogy news posted here, or maybe some news about a family event. Perhaps some remarkable achievement by a Carpenter relative? But since nobody has shared any news with me for quite some time, I will just tell you more about what's cooking with the website. Simmering slowly more like...

I have some pretty cool things simmering for the website that would allow more people to become directly involved in the editing of the site if I can recruit some good people. Nothing dramatic can happen until I can carve out some time to work on it, but the website is never entirely forgotten.

Except by spammers, which is another challenge I am working on. The spammers have ONLY bothered myself and Joe Clarkson so far because we receive the submissions from the Email forms. I will likely add a CAPTCHA to fool them. I am favoring reCAPTCHA because it has a secondary benefit of also helping to convert books in the public domain so they can be read online by current and future generations:

What is reCAPTCHA? <a target="_blank" href="http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html">http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html</a>
"A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. ... reCAPTCHA [also] improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher."

CONTENT?
New content comes to this site at a notoriously slow pace, but still, I will keep asking. If anyone knows about any new content for the website, please let me know, or encourage whomever has news to submit an article or post to the Forum.

It has been a while since the website had anything really new. I posted an open invitation last month and have gotten no response. I know things are probably slow, but I also know that babies are being born and people are making trips to see the old home places. I just know that someone somewhere has news. Have you taken a trip to an old home place?

New photos? Want to add your collection to the image gallery? The space on the Photos site is unlimited, so I can accommodate all of your photos. Send me an Email and we can make arrangements for you to either send me one or more data CDs or DVDs. If you are more technically minded, I can also arrange a few different methods for transferring the files.

For example, you can share up to a Gigabyte for free on Box.net (<a href="http://www.box.net" target="_blank">http://www.box.net</a>).
Box.net - Free Online File Storage, Internet File Sharing, Content Management, Access Documents & Files Anywhere, Backup Data, Send Files
"Box.net was originally founded in 2005 as a college business project with a vision of connecting people, devices and networks. Launched officially in March of 2006, Box.net currently provides secure online file storage and sharing functionality to over 750,000 registered users, serving files to millions of people around the world. Box.net's unique platform allows personal and commercial content to be accessible, sharable, and storable in any format from anywhere."
http://www.box.net/about

I am also considering turning the Announcements blog into a "community" which would allow a few select individuals to post to that same Announcements page. There may a few people who are active enough in the family to have more to say and we could keep that page updated more often that way. if you are interested in helping out with this, then please get in touch with me.

I have been swamped with new clients, which is great for business, but also pulls me away from personal projects like this website. When I get to doing all this stuff, I will let you know here, or you can just come back and check out the website periodically and look for changes.

: Joseph William Carpenter
: Albuquerque, NM

News

I am looking around for a new web hosting service.

I am quite content with the service level of our current host, but not with the amount of space. Even with outsourcing the images, we are bumping up against it with the GEDCOM taking nearly half the available space. There are some reasonable hosting services that should provide a similar level of support and also allow me to grow the site up to a gigabyte or so for the same money.

I am playing with content management systems (CMS) that would step things forward with a unified log in instead of patching things together. I am content with what I have done with the site, but a CMS system would be easier to update and also allow me to delegate some tasks to others with regards to adding new content.

As always, when there is no new content, then there is nothing to update. Please send me news, articles, recipes, etc.

I have not heard anything new about the cemetery committee.

I have not heard anything new about planning another reunion down the road.

I have not heard about anyone taking new and interesting genealogy trips.

What is happening with the Y-DNA project?

Please also visit the forums and post family news there yourself. That is what it is there for. If your corner of the family has a lot of news, then I can even give you your own section of the forum.

I have recently received a few new items of interest and had some help adding captions to some of the photographs.

The new information should be appearing on the site in the next week or so. I also expect a new GEDCOM update to go up soon as well. I will update these announcements when I have that done.

If you have visited any home places, please let us know by sending in a description of your experience, and maybe a few photos.

This website is happily, if slowly, growing.

: Joseph W. Carpenter

SmugMug news

UPDATE: This was a network related issue and it was resolved by the good folks at SmugMug.

As you may know, the Photographs portion of this website is powered by the SmugMug Photograph Hosting service.

I noticed this afternoon that their pages are not loading. I am looking into it. Possibly it will resolve itself before anyone even reads this note.

When I know what is going on, I will update this posting with the news.

By the way, I have backups of everything, so whatever happens, the project is secure.

: Joseph W. Carpenter
Your Webmaster

RE: Heinrich Zimmerman, imig.1698

Deb Wake had this to say about Thom's find... [JWC]

A year or two ago, I found information regarding this guy. This is what I have (from email sent to Ken Maggard, 3/17/2007): While at the VA state library yesterday, I also found a little information on Heinrich Zimmerman in:

Eshleman, H. Frank. Historic Background and Annals of the Swiss and German Pioneer Settlers of Southeastern Pennsylvania and of Their Remote Ancestors, from the Middle of the Dark Ages, Down to the Time of the Revolutionary War. Lancaster, PA: self pub.?, 1917.

p.130 [The author references other works but did not give a bibliography that I could find. I assume that Rupp is Daniel Rupp, but I'm not sure which book is being referenced here.] Rupp p. 126 Henry Zimmerman arrived in Germantown in 1698 but returned to Europe to bring back his family. They arrived in 1706 and settled first in Germantown but moved to Lancaster Co., PA in 1717 [p. 207 says this was then in Chester Co., PA]

p. 207 Emmanuel Zimmerman was the son of Henry [Emmanuel made a name for himself as a leader; was repeated re-elected despite his wishes to leave public office--he was very popular.]

p. 244 Henry Zimmerman requested a grant of 200 acres on a branch of the Conestoga in 1726

p. 260 some of the people who lived in Lancaster Co., PA in 1736 were George and Jacob Myers, Jacob Miller, Jacob Bair, and John Jacob Kreider--not sure if they're the ones that tie into the Fudge family, but the names caught my eye.

Don't know how much that helps, but it's what I have.

Deb

1903 Bio of a Carpenter/ Zimmerman family who came to PA from Switzerland in 1698

This came to me from Thom Flory in February. I am catching up, and thought to post it here until I can get around to formatting it properly.
: Joseph W. Carpenter
Your Webmaster

This is a 1903 Bio of a Carpenter/ Zimmerman family who came to PA from Switzerland in 1698. I certainly don't know that they relate to us, but I wonder if anyone of them has done a Y DNA test?
http://www.pa-roots.org/data/read.php?31,103545

Carpenter, Henry
Posted by: ceddle (IP Logged)
Date: February 15, 2002 12:20PM

HENRY CARPENTER, a prominent member of the Lancaster County Bar, is in every way a leading and representative citizen. His ancestors originated in Switzerland, coming to America, in the persons of Heinrich Zimmerman, and Salome Ruffner, his wife, in 1698, on account of the religious disturbance in their native land at that time. His location was in Pennsylvania, where he secured extensive tracts of land from William Penn, one demand, however, having to be complied with, that being the Anglicizing of the name. Thus Heinrich Zimmerman became Henry Carpenter, and since those early days, there has, in every generation, been a Henry Carpenter, the Lancaster county attorney being the sixth in line of succession.
Christian Carpenter, his grandfather, was a well-known and most worthy farmer who resided in Earl township, this county. There he prospered both in material and religious affairs, and built a church edifice which is known as Carpenter's church, in Earlville. Christian Carpenter was a man of liberal spirit, leaving in his will the request that this place of worship should be open to all who wished to use it for religious purposes, irrespective of creed. Many of the Carpenters lie in its shadow, and the kind influence of this good man pervades the place.

William Carpenter, the father of Henry Carpenter, of Lancaster, was for many years the reliable and best known surveyor, scrivener and conveyancer of Lancaster county. The contest which made him prothonotary of Lancaster was one of the most notable political events in the history of the county. Mr. Carpenter was an old Line Whig, and there had been a split in the Republican party. The result was a triangular fight in which Mr. Carpenter won, by six votes, over his principal competitor, Peter Martin. An election contest followed, and the result of this was that Mr. Carpenter was declared elected by a majority of twelve votes, just twice the number which he had originally claimed. This is history, and is well remembered by all parties. Mr. Carpenter filled the office and performed its duties with a faithfulness that left nothing to be desired. An old neighbor and personal friend of President James Buchanan, he was selected as one of the pall-bearers at the funeral of this dist! inguished statesman and courtly gentleman.

The marriage of William Carpenter was to Caroline Eichler, who was a daughter of a prominent farmer, living near Lititz, and to this union there were born fifteen children, seven of these still surviving: Albert, who became a member of the Bar in this county, but died in the early part of what promised to be a brilliant career; William, a banker, now deceased; Paul, a printer by trade, deceased; Charles, who occupied the position of paying teller in the Lancaster County National Bank, deceased; Mary A., deceased wife of the late Alderman H. R., McConomy; Caroline A., deceased, who was the wife of the late Jacob Bair; Catherine, who was the wife of the late John McGrann; Ella L., deceased wife of Col. Wm. R. Gerhart; Emily J., at home; Elizabeth, who is a teacher of literature, in Philadelphia; Israel, who is city regulator of Lancaster; Stella, who is the wife of Dr. J. W. Nelson, who is assistant to the general manager of the Pennsylvania railroad at Altoona, Pa.; Henry, of! Lancaster; Anna B., who died at the age of twenty-four years; and Salome R., who bears the name of her ancestral grandmother, the wife of Heinrich Zimmerman. A pleasant little bit of family history is that when the latter set out on his long trip to the strange country, where he intended to find a new home, that he was presented with a set of carpenter tools by no less a personage than Queen Anne of England herself, along with the lands from William Penn, the original deeds for the latter being yet in the family archives.

Henry Carpenter was born in the old Carpenter home, on East Orange street, it being the building which is now occupied by the Hamilton Club, on Nov. 29, 1859, and he passed with credit through the common and high schools of Lancaster.

After the death of his father in December, 1875, at the age of sixty-four years, the mother surviving until 1892, her death being at the age of sixty-eight years, Henry Carpenter went into the business of scrivening and conveyancing, in association with his brother, Israel, and in the meantime engaged in reading law, with David G. Eshleman. In June, 1881, he was admitted to the Bar, and later to practice in the Superior and the Supreme courts. Through four terms he made a fine record as city solicitor, and he was the nominee of the Republican party for the mayoralty. The successful competitor was the Democratic candidate, Robert Clark, not, however, on account of any want of confidence in Mr. Carpenter, but on account of the unfortunate split in the party. The political feelings of many of the good citizens of Lancaster were at fever heat, the trouble being in what was locally known, and recorded as the Livingston-Brubaker fight. Mr. Carpenter in his public life, has never c! ourted trouble, but he has always been a man who stood for certain principles, and in this contest he favored the claims of Judge Livingston, and hence was sacrificed by the opponents of this gentleman, and for no personal reasons. From his earliest manhood, Mr. Carpenter has been an ardent and active Republican, and has served efficiently on the Republican State Central committee.

Fraternally he is valued in a number of social organizations; was a member of the final examining committee of the Lancaster Bar, for many years; is a 32d degree Mason, belonging to the Philadelphia Consistory; is a Past Master of Lodge, No. 43; Past High Priest of Chapter, No. 43; Past Thrice Illustrious Grand Master of Goodwin Council, No. 19; Past Eminent Commander of Knights Templar Cornmandery No. 13; Past Thrice Potent Grand Master of Lancaster Lodge of Perfection, 14th degree; and is at present representative of Lodge No. 43, to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.

On Feb. 15, 1898, Mr. Carpenter was married to Miss Helen Sprecher Wiley, daughter of Thomas C. Wiley, and a granddaughter of the late Major W. M. Wiley, on the paternal side, and the granddaughter of the well known William D. Sprecher, of Lancaster on the maternal side. The family home at No. 503 North Duke street, Lancaster, is one of comfort and elegance, while his business office, at No. 54 North Duke street, is well located and stocked with a fine library. Here Mr. Carpenter transacts a large amount of business, and he is justly regarded as one of the prominent and prosperous citizens.
(Source: Biographical Annals of Lancaster County, Pa., Beers, 1903, pp. 186-7.)

Will Carpenter Shot dead over a matter of $2.12...

We have an article coming that concerns the "Carpenter killing of July 1894"

This involves the incident whereby Adam William "Will" Carpenter was killed by the Sheriff of Frio County, Texas, in Pearsall, Tx, July 1894 over a matter of $2.12.

More information to come when I get that article converted to a format I can post on the website. That should happen sometime in the next few days.

: Joseph Carpenter
Your Webmaster

How do I make the text larger?

Howdy all,

Several family members have written me to ask if I would make the fonts larger on the website, forums, photograph galleries, etc.

Browser text size is something you can control yourself in your own web browser. It would be impossible for me to please everyone, but you can control your own browser settings to suit yourself.

In Mozilla Firefox, you look at the VIEW menu, then TEXT SIZE, then use +INCREASE or -DECREASE to adjust things as you see fit.

In Internet Explorer 6, you look at the VIEW menu, then TEXT SIZE, then choose from the list of sizes offered.

Other browsers will have similar features. You may have to consult the help file for your browser.

Then you can view ANY web page to suit your personal preferences. You can even set the larger fonts as your default setting. Some pages may look strangely if they are viewed in extremely large fonts; however, most of the pages on my website will adjust without any problem.

: Joseph

Keeping in touch

Well, things around here have been pretty sleepy.

This website has been pretty slow since we got those photo updates from Joe Clarkson Carpenter. I know there are meetings ongoing about the cemetery maintenance, but nothing new has been posted in a while. If you are on that committee, then bring it up with the committed, and maybe one of you can come up with a news release about what has been going on that the rest of the family might like to know.

Seeing as we have been having a stormy winter, I imagine not many of you have been traveling. When you do get around to visiting the old home sites again, why not consider keeping some notes, take a few photographs and then write up a quick letter to the family describing the highlights and submit that to the forum? It does not have to be fancy, just say it in your own words and send it in via Email. Registered members can post it to the forums on their own.

I can receive batches of files (photos, documents, etc) via Email, so long as they do not exceed about 3MB per batch. You will need to write to me the first time using the web form, then I will give you a "real" Email address to send to. You can send files to me loose if you do not know any other way; however I strongly prefer receiving an archive file.

The best way to send groups of files on the Internet is to compress them and add them to an archive file (e.g. "filename.zip"). Think of it as an electronic envelope. It will make your transmit size smaller and will also help prevent data corruption while your files are on the way. I will put more information about file compression at the end of this post following my signature.

The main point here is to keep saying the same thing over and over. The only way this website is going to grow, and thus make progress on the goal of preserving family history, is if you all submit your stories, your research, your photographs, etc..

CREATE A SPECIAL PAGE FOR YOU
If you are ambitious, and plan to submit several articles, then I can create a special web page just for you. Then others will see your information in one place. Think of me as your publisher. If you understand HTML, or have a good tool that created clean code, then all I have to do is post your work. If you do not have a way to create the HTML yourself, then just send me the text and the photos. I promise I will do it justice and give you a chance to approve the final product before the rest of the family takes a look.

Are you worried about posting things a stranger might see? I can give your pages the same protection that we use to password protect the GEDCOM files. Then, only confirmed family will be approved to access your pages. You already enjoy privacy protections in the FORUM, so why not post your stories there? It is just about as easy as writing an Email. Just type the subject and then either type or paste in the text.

PHOTOGRAPHS, and the benefit to you
I also have unlimited capacity for storing digital photos. Yes, that is not a typo. The capacity is UNLIMITED. That means we can add to the Photographs until everything we have collectively is available for other family members and especially for future generations.

That service is backed up daily, and the backups are stored miles deep inside a granite mountain. That facility was designed to withstand a nuclear attack... no kidding. I can request a set of DVD backups anytime. For now, I have a copy of everything stored offline, but if this thing grows big enough, then you can be sure that I will request a backup as often as seems necessary.

If that is not enough, consider this... If you share your photographs with this Photographs database, then you can enjoy that same backup protection from disaster. You can sleep well knowing that you can always download a copy of your priceless photographs later if your computer crashes or you suffer a calamity like Hurricane Katrina.

You can also request professional prints of your photos. The same quality prints that you have seen with other online photo services, you get here.

I am offering you this for free. If you would like to donate something, that will help keep this site growing. However, I have no plans to ever charge for this service to the family. The only limitation is that on my account, I am accepting only Genealogy related images. Family photos are okay, that are representative of each generation. I can even password protect individual galleries so that access to them can be controlled to the special people you might choose to share them with.

I am currently visiting some options for gaining better control over who is able to see the Galleries, and to control blocking them from Google Searches. I would like to do this in such a way that they are still viewable from the website. If you have questions about this, or other questions regarding SmugMug, then send me an Email.

Anyway, the main point of writing today is to let everyone know I am still around, and still watching and waiting for new information. If any one of you gets motivated to share some information, then look for the contact the webmaster Email links posted all over this website and get in touch with me so we can discuss your needs. I am here to serve.

: Joseph W. Carpenter
: Your friendly neighborhood webmaster

For more information about compression utilities, see www.7zip.com (free for Windows only), www.stuffit.com (~$25 for standard version), or www.winzip.com (~$30) .) I will write up an article one of these days and post it to our technical resources section. Ambition is lofty, time is precious.

FYI for those who already know about file compression -- I can accept most standard archive formats (e.g. *.zip, *.7z, *.sit, *.sitx, *.gz, *.tar, *.dmg, *.rar, etc.)

New photos posted by Joe Clarkson Carpenter!

Joe Clarkson has posted three new galleries in the Photos section of the website. You can view his Reunion2006 photographs, as well as two other galleries of a more historic nature.

I found it fascinating to read the captions and learned that some of his ancestors were international travelers. Check out the <a href="http://jwcarpenter.smugmug.com/community/DescendantsOfGeorgeZimmerman">Photographs (x-link)</a> at the top of the website to see the new galleries, as well as several others that contain both contemporary and historic images.

: Joseph Carpenter
: Your friendly neighborhood webmaster