CARTER (last updated September 7, 2009)

Obviously, another family name of great interest is Carter.  Other than the obvious, I initially was interested in learning the source of the name Jerrell.  The earliest Carter known was my grandfather, a William Jesse Carter.  There are lots of Carters, and the names Jesse, William, and Thomas are common, but the name Jerrell does not show.  I had identified who I thought was my g-grand father, a Thomas J.  Carter married to an Elindor.  As a result, I was speculating about the "J" and running down many possibilities -- educational, but not really a fruitful effort.  Then one day I noticed a posting by Sarah Freedberg who was looking for information about the Carters who moved from Georgia to Kansas.  Since I knew that my grandfather was born in Gainesville, GA and my dad was born in Kansas, I thought there might be a fit so I responded to the posting.  It turned out that Sarah's maternal ancestor was a younger sister of my grandfather Jesse.  And Sarah had all members of this family identified including the parents, Thomas Jackson Carter and Elindor Prather.  She also knew Thomas's siblings as well as his parents, a Lefse Carter and Samira Prickett.   I subsequently determined that her Lefse was really Jesse; the "L" was really an ambiguously scripted "J" and the double "ss" was written as "fs."

Sarah had heard stories about the Carters, and an intriguing one was that a Carter came home after the civil war, and was taken out back and shot since he had deserted during the war.  Research disclosed that both Thomas Jackson and brother William enlisted the same date, Feb 24, 1862.  This is a little surprising since they both were recently married, in 1861, January and April respectively.  Their military records show both as having deserted.  But, Thomas returned to duty and was a corporal when discharged at the end of the War.  There was no further mention in the military record for William.  These brothers were close, as shown by their enlistment dates, and their marriage to cousins.  William married a Mary Prater and Thomas married Eleanor.  I have certified marriage records for both William and Thomas; I also have a marriage certificate for Jesse Carter and Samira Pricket.   The family records have William's death as November 1863.  And Jesse's will makes mention of the widow of son William, and his grandson Alexander Glenn.  But, Alexander's parents are a major puzzle.  Alexander was born about 1857, which is before William's marriage to Mary.  In both the 1860 and 1870 census, Alexander was living with the Jesse/Samira Carter family. Alexander left Georgia and was shown in the 1880 Kansas Census as a nephew, age 23, with Thomas. Thomas left Georgia in the late 1860s and was found living in Missouri during the 1870 census.  No further meaningful and helpful information about this Alexander had been found until 2007.  I stumbled upon a posting attributed to a g-granddaughter of Alexander.  I learned that Alexander returned to GA from Kansas, married 1/15/1888, had a daughter born 1889 and died August 1890 of Typhoid fever.

During this initial and extensive exchange with Sarah Freedberg, Pat Ames contacted Sarah about one of her postings.  Pat Ames is also related, but to another sister of William Jesse.  Pat had pictures of family members, and during one exchange with me she asked me if I knew a Dr. Jerrell Carter.  I was floored and got goose bumps!!   Obviously, I did.  She then sent me a copy of the picture and it was one of my dad taken shortly after getting out of medical school and entering the Navy as a doctor. I already had a copy.

I attempted to get a copy of my dad's official service record, both as an enlisted hospital corpsman in WWI and later as a doctor.  After a year of waiting, I managed to make contact via phone with a real person in St. Louis who confirmed that they had my request.  It was then suggested that I make another written request as they had re-organized and perhaps the original request had been "lost."  I did and after several more months, I also submitted another reminder.  Still nothing!  After a total of about 20 months, I was ready to fight.  So I wrote a letter to the Archivist - Head of NARA - and explained that "we" had a problem.  Within 2 weeks I had the complete file for my dad as a doctor and, after a phone call directly to the person who responded to my request, I promptly received his WW I record.  I was interested in learning that Dad was in the Philipines and China during his early days.  He was in China again shortly after my sister was born, but this time he was a navy doctor.

Using Jesse Carter's will, which identified his property, I looked up the deed transfers in Hall Co to learn if any of the property had come from another Carter - a possible relation.  Unfortunately, there was no such occurrence.  Pat stated that the family property was eventually covered by the man-made Lake Lanier.  The section numbers for the property enabled me to locate the property and by looking at the recorded transfers, found various transactions from Jesse to Thomas and to Samira, and then subsequent transfers from Samira to her children at about the time she left Georgia.  Samira went to Kansas where she is found to be living with Thomas in the 1900 census.  Because we three Cuzs have not been able to find any real possibilities for the parents of Jesse, I made a list of all the Carter families shown in census indices of SC for 1810 and 1820, the years around his birth date that was 1814.  I started with SC since subsequent census records identified SC as Jesse's place of birth.  I also then made a list of all Carters shown in census indices as living in GA in 1820 and 1830, the years between his birth and his marriage in GA, 1834.  I hope this listing encompasses Jesse's family.  I further narrowed the composite down to those families having at least one male child the age of Jesse and further limited it to families living in northeastern Georgia.   The composite identifies 77 families.  After nearly completing this effort, I learned that no census records exist for several areas of SC.   So much for that idea of mine!   But as I found information about various Carter families, it will give me a listing where I can eliminate those families that are known to not be possible.

 I was unable to go back further, until DNA testing was available. My learning is described in this page on DNA Testing.