Transcribed and Edited by Edmund Berkeley, Jr.

This site includes transcriptions of the diary, correspondence, and papers of the richest andmost important man of his day in Virginia, who owned at his death at least 300,000 acrescontaining many farms and plantations that produced tobacco and other crops for sale, some1,000 slaves to work those plantations, and large sums of money invested in Virginia and inEngland. Robert Carter was a member of the Council of Virginia, acting governor, apolitical power in the colony, and acquired land at a notable rate even in a time when suchgreedy acquisiton was common among his class. He had received a classical education inEngland, and corresponded widely both within the colony and with merchants in England.

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This site includes (as of January 16, 2007) transcripts of all the extant Robert Carter texts of which I am presently aware other than the inventory of his estate on which I am working. Becauseof the length of that document, I shall add new sections of it to the site from time to time.

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I am unable to respond to genealogical inquiries about Robert Carter.

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I would very much appreciate messages about errors found on the site. See "Contact the Editor" inthe "Site Directory" below.

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This screen revised August 19, 2004, and April, July 27, and January 16, 2007.

Site Directory

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Project History, Support, and Acknowledgements

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The Extant Texts

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Policies for Transcription, Dates, and Display

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A Brief Life of Robert Carter

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Brief Notes on Often-cited Persons, Places,and Things in Robert Carter's Diary and Letters

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Robert Carter and the Ralph Wormeley Estate

Page 1of 12The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, 1701-17321/14/2009file://C:\htdocs\genealogy\Carter\The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert King ...

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Robert Carter and the Northern Neck Proprietary

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Brent Town Within the Proprietary

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Project Bibliography

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Contact the editor

Read and Search The Transcribed Texts Project History, Support, and Acknowledgements

While interest in making Robert Carter's letters generally available to scholars and the public began in1938 with the publication of Louis B. Wright's edition of a letter book of Carter's that had strayed westfrom Virginia to the Huntington Library in California, the present project traces itself to the late 1940's.At that time, more letter books and a diary of Carter's were discovered. Three of the letter books wereacquired by the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, and four letter books and the diary by theUniversity of Virginia Library, They are now held in the Albert and Shirley Small Special CollectionsLibrary, University of Virginia. Charlottesville. Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., then curator of manuscripts atthe University of Virginia Library, began work immediately on a project to publish these texts.Transcripts were prepared according to the editing principles of the time: punctuation and capital letterswere added to sentences, abbreviations expanded, and the like. Mr. Berkeley continued to work on theproject until he left the Library to become executive assistant to the president of the University in 1961.One of his plans for retirement was to resume the editorial work which he did after 1974 for severalyears. Sadly, a progressive eye disease put an end to his dream, and he was forced to turn over to thecurrent editor all of the material he had accumulated over the years.I worked on the project sporadically during a busy career as curator of manuscripts, and later, as the firstdirector of special collections at the University of Virginia Library. As I had written my master's thesison "King" Carter, and had read all the letters and the diary for that work, I was familiar with the texts.My work has been supported by the University of Virginia Library Faculty Research Committee whichprovided a number of grants of released time as well as funds for the employment of student assistants.My thanks go to the Committee for its support, and to Sherry Armstrong, Milly Fife, and SusanGarrahan for their cheerful and invaluable assistance. Most important of all was a 1988 grant from theVirginia Foundation for History and Public Policy, to which I also extend my thanks, that grant enabledme to take a semester's leave from my duties at the Library during which I completed new transcripts of the letters to the literal style of today's editorial work, and wrote footnotes for many of the letters. Myintent remained book publication for the texts, and I prepared an initial manuscript for the early letters.My interest in computer work and the early development of electronic texts at the University of VirginiaLibrary exposed me to this process, and to HTML and SGML tagging. My membership in theAssociation for Documentary Editing kept me aware of the work of the Model Editions Partnershipwhose reports have been particularly helpful. As I approached my own retirement, I decided that I wouldwork immediately on an electronic edition of the Carter texts making use of the facilities and interest of the Electronic Text Center of the University of Virginia Library and its director, David Seaman.After spending some time tagging texts with SGML, David Seaman convinced me to convert to XML,the tagging scheme of the future. It has advantages for me because it allows me to review and correct"finished" texts on my home computer screen without first transferring them to the Electronic TextCenter.

Page 2of 12The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, 1701-17321/14/2009file://C:\htdocs\genealogy\Carter\The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert King ...

This electronic edition will place Carter's texts before those interested much more rapidly thanotherwise, and will add to the body of sources readily available to researchers interested in earlyeighteenth-century Virginia.

The Extant Texts

The texts consist chiefly of nine volumes of copies of outgoing letters, 1701-1710, and 1720-1732,drafted by one or another of several clerks or occasionally by one of his sons, from Carter's dictation orgeneral directions. In addition there are: a one-volume diary, 1722-1727 with a few days in January1728, in Carter's hand; a dozen or more recipients' copies of letters; a larger number of nineteenth-century transcripts for letters dated between 1717 and 1719 copied from a letter book not extant as wellas for later letters found in the extant letter books; and a few letters addressed to Carter. No texts havebeen found for 1711-1714, and there are only a few recipient's copies of letters in 1725-1726. Thus, thisproject deals with texts written out at Carter's direction by a variety of persons in addition to the text of his diary in his hand.Approximately 800 letters survive, and of these, some 750 are drafts found in the letter books. Thesetexts are reasonably easy to read, the major problems coming from the variety of handwritings and stylesof punctuation and capitalization of the various clerks with the additional complication of a number of texts available only in nineteenth-century transcripts. The disorder in chronology of the letters isconsiderable in some of the letter books because the clerks apparently would pick up the nearest book when Carter was ready to dictate. If there is more than one letter with the same date, the letters are inorder alphabetically by the recipients' last names.Of the surviving recipients' copies of his letters (generally written out by clerks and signed by Carter),perhaps three or four are duplicated in the letter books. Many of the extant letters are addressed tomerchants or other persons in Britain, and Carter followed the colonial practice of sending duplicateletters by different ships. Only one such example survives. The Huntington Library has two recipient'stexts of the letter of June 30, 1724, to Colonel William Cage, both of them written by clerks, signed byCarter and sealed with his arms, one sent "per the Princess Carolina, Captain Holladay," and the other"per the Spotswood, Captain Bagnell."The diary covers the years 1722-1727 with a few days in January 1728, and is in very bad physicalcondition, the edges of many pages having flaked off. It is difficult to read at times due to Carter'scarelessness and his habit of abbreviating words. Frank Berkeley wrote of the diary that it is "highlytelegraphic in style, almost as terse as shorthand at times in its frugality of expression, and almost totallylacking in punctuation." Carter's spelling was inconsistent at best, and entirely freewheeling at its worst.He was voluble only in regard to his health in this diary, and often frustratingly refers to his "otherbook" where details of happenings apparently were recorded. The poor physical condition of the diarywith its numerous holes and tears in the text have made the use of large numbers of square brackets inthe transcript necessary.

Policies for Transcription, Dates, and Display

The following rules for transcription, dates, and display on computer browser screens have been used:Page 3of 12The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert "King" Carter of Virginia, 1701-17321/14/2009file://C:\htdocs\genealogy\Carter\The Diary, Correspondence, and Papers of Robert King ...