Louisa Ann Powell was born on May 8, 1812, in Exeter, Devon, England. In 1840, she married William Benjamin Carpenter, an English physician, invertebrate zoologist, and physiologist. One of their children was William Lant Carpenter, born in 1841. She died on October 5, 1887, in London, England.

Mary Carpenter was born on April 3, 1807, in Exeter, Devon, England.

She was an English philanthropist and social reformer, the first child of Dr. Lant Carpenter (1780-1840), a Unitarian minister in Exeter. She studied the sciences, mathematics, Greek and Latin at a school established by her father. Later she became a headteacher at what was now Mrs. Carpenter's Boarding School for Young Ladies. In 1843, she became interested in the anti-slavery movement and contributed to fund-raising efforts in the abolitionist cause. In 1835, she helped organize a "Working and Visiting Society" that visited the poor and raised funds from the emerging middle-classes to alleviate poverty and improve education. She published articles and books on her work and her lobbying was instrumental in the passage of several educational acts in the mid-19th century, e.g., the Juvenile Offenders Act in 1854. She set up a girls' Red Lodge Reformatory (now the Red Lodge Museum) in 1854. She was the first woman to have a paper published by the Statistical Society of London. She addressed many conferences and meetings and became known as one of the foremost public speakers of her time. She also travelled to India, visiting schools and prisons, and working to improve female education, establish reformatory schools, and improve prison conditions. In later years she visited Europe and America, carrying on her campaigns of penal and educational reform. She publicly supported women's suffrage and campaigned for female access to higher education. She has a memorial in the North transept of Bristol Cathedral.

She died on June 14, 1877, in Bristol, Somerset, England.

Minnie (Wilhelmina) or Minna Meyer was born in Hamburg, Germany. She married Dr. Philip P. Carpenter in 1860.

Philip Herbert Carpenter was born on February 6, 1852, in London, England.

He was a British naturalist and crinoid authority, the fourth son of Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885). In 1874, he graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a member of the scientific staff of the deep-sea exploring expeditions of H.M.S. Lightning (1868), Porcupine (1869–1870), Valorous (1875), and Challenger (1872–1876). He became an expert on the morphology of the echinoderms, especially the crinoids, both contemporary and fossil. In 1883, he was awarded the Lyell Fund by the Geological Society of London in recognition of the scientific value of his work. In 1885, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He published many papers on Echinoderm and especially Crinoid morphology, in the Royal, Linnean, Geological, and Zoological Societies of London, the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Zoologischer Anzeiger, and many other journals.

In 1879, he married Caroline Emma Hale (1858–1936). He took his own life on October 21, 1891, in Eton, England, by self-administration of chloroform during a bout of temporary insanity caused by chronic insomnia.

Born in Bristol, England, son of Lant and Anne Carpenter, Philip Carpenter received all his education in England. After attending universities in Edinburgh and Manchester, he received his B.A. from the University of London in 1841. Upon graduation, he, like his father, became a Unitarian minister, first in Stand for five years and then in Warrington for 12 years. In this period, he became involved in the welfare of the communities, particularly in education, the temperance movement and sanitation. Although shell collecting had been a hobby since boyhood, it was the purchase of the Mazatlan collection of California shells in 1856 which was the start of a serious interest. Carpenter offered the collection to the British Museum with the understanding that he would arrange and classify the specimens. The subsequent publication of a catalogue led to invitations to do similar work in the United States, particularly at the Smithsonian Institute, and in 1858, he was granted a two-year leave of absence from his ministerial duties. Upon his return, difficulties with the hierarchy of the Unitarian Church convinced him to break away completely and devote his remaining years to Conchology. In 1865, he emigrated to Montreal. His offer of a duplicate set of the Mazatlan collection to McGill University was accepted by Principal Dawson, who named Carpenter Honorary Curator, providing him with space to mount his specimens and defraying any costs. Dawson intended that this collection would result in the building of the Redpath Museum. Although not primarily a collector himself, Carpenter went on to classify shells for many collectors throughout the United States. Along with his work on shells, Carpenter continued to urge City councils to improve the sanitary conditions of Montreal and was instrumental in laws prohibiting the exhumation of bodies in disused graveyards when the City wanted the land for housing. Ironically, he died of typhoid fever in 1877 at the age of 57 and is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery.