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| From http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/berkeley/ 47 A Brief Life of Robert Carter Robert Carter lived his adult life in Lancaster County, Virginia, on the southern side of the Northern Neck peninsula, not far from the point at which the Rappahannock empties into Chesapeake Bay, where he was born in 1663 and died in 1732, at the home, "Corotoman," established there by his father. He was educated in England by his father's direction, and acquired a life-long appreciation of books and reading, and the value of a good education. He inherited property from his father, and a sizeable estate on the death of his older half-brother John, but through his own business abilities and the opportunities that he seized, he had acquired well over 300,000 acres of land, nearly 1,000 slaves, and a considerable cash estate by the time of his death according to his obituary in London's Gentleman's Magazine. No other Virginian of his generation was so successful in his political career, in the marriages made by his children, and so ruthless in building his estate for the benefit of those children. He was astute in business, politics, and land speculation, and his fortune, political successes, and estates, vast even in a time of insatiability in land ownership, demonstrate his success. His acute sense of his own importance, and knowledge of the power that his wealth and political acumen had brought him, earned him the derisive nickname of "King," His political power was firmly based in the inheritances that he received from his father, Colonel John Carter (c. 1613-1669), from his older half-brother, Lt. Col. John Carter (c. 1648-1690), and from family connections. John Carter, the immigrant, made several voyages to Virginia before establishing himself there permanently between May 1638 and January 1641. Apparently he brought with him useful political connections and considerable money for he soon was chosen burgess for Nansemond River in Upper Norfolk County. But his attention was further north; he acquired land by patent and purchase in what was then Charles River County (to become Lancaster in 1751). Although he appears first in theLancaster County records in January 1652, he had apparently not yet "seated" his land and had to obtain that April an act of the Assembly for an extension; he moved there soon afterwards. Through his connections and his wealth, John Carter rose quickly to prominence in the colony, and by 1657 he was a member of the council. His five marriages produced only six children, several of whom died in infancy. Most important to Robert was his older half-brother, John, who raised him after their father died in 1669. John Carter I followed the custom of the time in bequeathing most of his property to his eldest son, but he made provision for Robert, leaving him 1,000 acres on a branch of Corotoman, one-third of his personal estate, "his mother's hoop ring & christall necklace," and a sixth part of his books. Most important for Robert were the specific instructions that his father wrote concerning his education. Robert was to have a tutor who would teach him both English and Latin. John Carter II, who was about fifteen years older than his brother, obeyed their father's instructions, and furthered them by sending Robert home to England for higher education. The custom of the time was that boys were sent to England when they were nine or ten, and Robert probably sailed to England about 1673. From a letter of Robert's written late in his life when he was quarreling with his English factor, William Dawkins, over the education of his own sons and grandsons, we know that he spent at least six years in England, living in the home of merchant and family friend, Arthur Bailey, and learning from him, and from the opportunities presented by living with the merchant, much of the tobacco trade and its marketing end. Robert's education in England undoubtedly included thorough grounding in the Christian religion. Most of his schoolmasters would have been clergymen, and would have considered religious education a fundamental requirement of their curricula. While Robert always considered himself "of the Church of England way," he was not intolerant of dissenters, and Louis B. Wright has written in several places of the books by Puritans and others in the libraries of both John Carters which Robert would have had access to before and after his years in England. He would purchase titles on religious subjects for his library, which included the books that he inherited from his brother and father, through the rest of his life. Robert returned to Virginia about 1680 to take up the life of a Virginia gentleman on the modest estates he had been left by his father. He built a house on the home property at "Corotoman," however, a brick story-and-a-half structure of three rooms. He lived in it until he moved into the larger two-story mansion which dominated the Corotoman landscape for a decade beginning about 1720. John Carter II continued much of the service and prominence that his father had established as the norm for the family. He is referred to as captain at first, but by 1672, his rank is that of lieutenant colonel, a title, presumably from his militia service, that he is accorded until his death.. He served as sheriff in 1673 and again in 1678, burgess, and at other times, he was collector of the levy. Unlike his younger brother, John Carter II was not obsessed with the acquisition of land. Checks of the land office records do not show that he took out any patents. Apparently running his farms successfully, raising his brother, and being active in county affairs were sufficient for him. He married first Elizabeth Hull prior to 1675 when he is named in the will of his father-in-law. This marriage produced one daughter, Elizabeth, who was to marry John Lloyd in 1693. Elizabeth Hull Carter was dead by 1684 when Lancaster records mention a marriage between John Carter and Elizabeth Travers who outlived him to marry Christopher Wormeley, dying herself in 1693. By 1688 it was apparent that John Carter's principal heir was to be his brother, and this greatly improved the latter's prospects. Robert was married in that year to Judith Armistead, daughter of John Armistead of "Hesse," Gloucester County; their son, John, was born about 1689, and four other children followed, Elizabeth in 1692, Judith and Sarah who died in infancy, and a second Judith in 1695. Because no letters or other texts survive from this period of his life, little is known about his wife, or the early years of his children, but presumably the traditional Virginia custom was followed in raising and educating the Carter children. Having renounced the carefree life of the bachelor, Robert was considered ready for the types of public service that his father and brother had undertaken. Robert's first position was that of justice of the Lancaster Court, an office for which he took the required oaths on 10 June 1690. Election as a vestryman for Christ Church Parish followed on 8 November 1690; about a year later he was chosen church warden, a position he retained until his death. And service to the colony soon ensued with his election as burgess for the session beginning 1 April 1692. He was returned to every session of the Burgesses until 1699 with the exception of the two sessions held in 1693. As chairman of the Committee of Propositions and Grievances in 1695, Carter steered the members to present a protest against the actions of the Northern Neck proprietary agents, and the proprietary itself. This was his last effort of this sort because the appeal of acting as Virginia agent for the proprietors was soon to bring him over to their side. He took a leading role in the work of the House, and "in September 1696 Carter was elected Speaker over five other nominees. Carter was not chosen as Speaker for the 1698 session, but was in April 1699. Also at this session, the House chose Carter as Treasurer of the colony, an office which, as Jon Kukla has observed, was one usually associated with the Speaker. However, the House took the most unusual step of allowing Carter to retain the office of Treasurer even after his appointment to the Council was confirmed in England by the Privy Council on 14 December 1699. There is no indication in the surviving records that Carter had any formal training in the law, but he was interested in it. Most planters of his day found it necessary to learn something of the law because many served as justices. Service in the House of Burgesses, particularly assignment in 1695 to serve on a committee to revise the laws of the colony as the Board of Trade had ordered, may have spurred Robert Carter's interest. By the time of his death, he had about 100 law books in his library, more than one-third of its total. He never hesitated to include references to the law in his letters. In colonial Virginia, one official post led quickly to others; a seat in the Council brought several posts with it. Carter was appointed on 3 June 1699 as colonel and commander-in-chief of the Lancaster-Northumberland counties militia; on November 11th of the same year the governor appointed him as naval officer and receiver, a post of value because of the considerable income it generated, and because of the power over one's neighbors that it meant By 1701, when the first of the extant letters was written by Robert Carter, he was already one of the most prominent men in the colony as a member of its council, and the significant events of the early portion of his life had occurred, including the death of his first wife in 1699 and his second marriage (to Elizabeth Landon Willis, by whom he would have ten children) in 1701. The letters dated between 1701 and 1710 included in this project reflect little of Carter's personal, political, and mercantile interests of that time because they are ones he wrote as one of the trustees of the children of his friend, Ralph Wormeley, and deal with their affairs rather than his own. There are a few that step outside his duties to his friend, and they show his interest in land acquisition, a topic that would occupy him all of the rest of his life. There is little extant on his first term as Virginia agent for the proprietors of the Northern Neck, an arrangement of importance to Carter because it gave him a taste of how profitable that office could be. A separate section of this project concerns Carter's work as the proprietor's Virginia agent. There are no extant texts for the years 1711-1714, one in 1715, none in 1716, and a few for the years 1717-1719 from various sources including some nineteenth-century copies made from a letter book no longer extant. Beginning with the year 1720 and continuing until Carter's death in August 1732, the record is fairly full, and a good picture of his management of his affairs, political interests, and daily routines can be drawn. The most important events of the last twenty-two years of his life were to be his term as acting governor of the colony after the death in July 1726 of Hugh Drysdale until the arrival of William Gooch in September 1727, and his second term as agent for the proprietors of the Northern Neck. By the time that Carter became acting governor, he was in his sixties and in poor health. His extant diary, kept between 1722 and 1728, gives information his concerns while tantalizing with references to his "other book" in which he apparently wrote more detailed entries. His drive to acquire land for his children led him to acquire in 1720 a lease of the propriety from Lord Fairfax, and to take patents on huge quantities of land moving ever westward in Virginia with his acquisitions. It is in his management of his highly successful agricultural operations and in his operation of the proprietary that our interest in him lies. The hundreds of letters that he wrote in this period and the one extant diary provide a wealth of information for those interested in Virginia in the early years of the eighteenth century. Management of his farms occupies much of Carter's time and his writings. The majority of his letters are written to British merchants consigning tobacco for sale, ordering goods for his family, servants and slaves, and the like, but as many of the merchants were at least old friends, there are frequent comments about Virginia events and people. Carter orders clothes, books, and newspapers for himself, writes about his poor health, and seeks favors ranging from wine to offices for his sons. Robert Carter was influential in his own day and left a family dynasty that continues to this day. At one time, he was estimated to have over 50,000 descendants including six governors of Virginia, three signers of the Declaration of Independence, and two presidents of the United States. Five sons and five daughters survived to marry well and were themselves prolific. His letters and other writings reveal his drive to establish this dynasty, and the skill and intelligence he brought to this effort. Sources There are two academic lives of Robert Carter that treat his life in detail: Carl F. Canon's doctoral dissertation, "Robert ( "King" ) Carter of "Corotoman" for Duke University, 1956; and "Robert King Carter," a master's thesis at the University of Virginia by Edmund Berkeley, Jr., in 1961. Details of the Carter genealogy are to be found in Christine Jones, John Carter I of "Corotoman" Lancaster County, Virginia (Irvington, Virginia: Foundation for Historic Christ Church, Inc., 1977). One letter book of Carter's has been published: Louis B. Wright, Letters of Robert Carter 1720-1727: The Commercial Interests of a Virginia Gentleman (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1940). Wright also wrote of the Carters' libraries in "The "Gentleman's Library" in Early Virginia: The Literary Interests of the First Carters," (Huntington Library Quarterly, I (1937), 3-61). His schooling in England has been covered very well by Alan Simpson in "Robert Carter's Schooldays" , an article in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (94[April 1986]: 161-188). And Jon Kukla in Speakers and Clerks of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1643-1776 (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1981) gives the details of Carter's career as a burgess and council member. Fairfax Harrison's monumental study, Landmarks of Old Prince William (Berryville, Va.: Virginia Book Company, 1964, a one-volume reprint of the 1924 two-volume edition) remains invaluable for its detail about the development of that area of Virginia and the proprietary. There are numerous references to Carter and others of his period in Earl G. Swem's Virginia Historical Index which indexes a half-dozen publications on Virginia history and genealogy. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Last Modified 11 Sep 2004 | Created 16 Jun 2005 by Reunion for Macintosh |