Exhibit A versus Exhibit B

 

It seems an easy way out to depend on published genealogies of our ancestors, especially those whose life span stretched over that century mark crossing from United States records to colonial British North American records. Exhibit A in that case might be said to be the Joseph Lyon Miller volume, The Descendants of Capt. Thomas Carter of "Barford," Lancaster County, Virginia, published in 1912, which includes a chapter on the "Descendants of John Carter of Caroline and Spotsylvania."

That volume, as has long been noted, contains information on two wives of John Carter. All well and good, you might think—until we reach the part about wife number one being named Elizabeth Armistead. 

The last time I had focused on John Carter's family as part of my annual Twelve Most Wanted, I stumbled upon wills of extended family members which had indicated that John Carter's first wife was not named Elizabeth Armistead, but Sarah Kenyon. Yet the Miller genealogy seemed to make no reference to that possibility.

Enter Exhibit B. Thanks to some exploration at FamilySearch.org using their Full Text Search option, I stumbled upon a typewritten manuscript drawn up by genealogist George Harrison Sanford King. Among other details, this report was concerned with the identity of John Carter's first wife.

As I read through this particular manuscript, I could see George Harrison Sanford King's painstakingly careful outlay of details in support of Sarah Kenyon as John Carter's wife. Let's just say that, in the case of Exhibit A versus Exhibit B, in the first ten pages, he had me convinced—although I admit, I was already partial to that point of view, having found some of those court records, myself.

However, pages one through ten of this manuscript are only skimming the surface of the legal paperwork drawn up concerning this extended family. We've only just begun learning the full story. By page ten it's too soon to draw up a judgment regarding the wives of John Carter just yet. Besides, as the manuscript reveals—and the court records bid me to observe—things are about to become rather messy in the Carter family's story.