♂John Carver Sr

John Carver (30 November 1738 – 3 August 1803) was a man of Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who served as a fifer and a private in militia companies during the Revolutionary War, and whose earliest recorded service began on 4 March 1776, the night the Continental Army fortified Dorchester Heights above Boston. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Eunice Carver (1763–1845).

Early life

John was born at Bridgewater on 30 November 1738. The town’s register of births records him as “John, ch. Eleaz[e]r and Katharine”, the son of Eleazer Carver and Katharine Elmes, who had married at Middleborough on 2 December 1719. His mother had been born at Scituate in 1698. He was the youngest of the couple’s children recorded in the printed Bridgewater books; an elder brother, also named Eleazer, held a lieutenant’s rank and died in 1755 in his thirty-first year.

A printed genealogy, The Carver Family of New England, traces his father’s line back to Robert Carver of Marshfield in Plymouth Colony. Its list of Eleazer and Katharine’s children stops in 1735 and does not include John; the town record of his birth, which names both parents, is the evidence for his place in the family.

Marriage and family

On 18 October 1762 he married Bathsheba Edson (about 1742–1836) at Bridgewater; the town register records the marriage under both surnames. Their daughter Eunice was born in Bridgewater in March 1763. In January 1784 Eunice married Joseph Knapp of the neighboring town of Easton, and the couple later moved to Leeds, in the District of Maine.

John’s will of 1803 names his wife Bathsheba, who survived him, and twelve children: Bathsheba, Eleazer, Eunice, John, Ursula, Betty, Lucy, Ruth, Caleb, Calvin, Bethiah and Joshua. The will itself is known only through a summary in The Carver Family of New England, which says the order of their births is not known. The same book quotes the History of Bridgewater as saying that he “had a large family who removed westward”.

The Revolution

The published record of Massachusetts soldiers and sailors lists “Carver, John, Bridgewater” as a fifer in Captain Abram Washburn’s company of Colonel Edward Mitchell’s regiment, which marched to Horse Neck in Braintree on 4 March 1776 and served six days. That was the night the army occupied and fortified Dorchester Heights, the move that forced the British out of Boston later that month; the record does not say what his company was sent to Braintree to do. He was then thirty-seven. He served again as a private in Captain James Allen’s company of Major Eliphalet Cary’s regiment, which marched to Bristol, Rhode Island, for twenty-three days on a roll dated 19 April 1777, and in the same company on the Rhode Island alarm of 30 July to 9 August 1780. A Joseph Knap of Bridgewater, either his future son-in-law or that man’s father, is listed in the same company for the 1777 march.

Death

John Carver died at Bridgewater on 3 August 1803. A lineage-society listing places his grave, unmarked, in the old burial ground on Summer Street in Bridgewater. Family trees give the death of his widow Bathsheba as 1836, at Leeds, Maine.

Notes

The printed Bridgewater death record adds an age of 65, taken from a private record rather than the town entry; born in November 1738, he was 64 at his death. A lineage society’s record gives his death as 3 June 1803; the town record gives 3 August.

He shared his name with John Carver, the first governor of Plymouth Colony, who came on the Mayflower and died in 1621. The governor left no surviving children, so no descent runs from him; the printed Carver genealogy makes this family descendants of Robert Carver of Marshfield instead.