The Nation: Magnus Carter: Jimmy’s Roots

From hoi polloi to hoity-toity

Carter is not exactly a grand old English name. The first Carters were, of course, carters, medieval truck drivers. Yet despite the family’s hoi-polloi origins and plain-folks posture, Jimmy Carter’s family tree turns out to have some hoity-toity upper limbs. The President is related to, among others, Queen Elizabeth I, George Washington, three other previous Presidents and the first American millionaire.

Jimmy’s rich roots have been unearthed by Debrett’s, the famed English tracers of lineage. Pursuing genealogical research for another, undisclosed American Carter, Debrett’s has tracked Jimmy’s forebears back to 1361 and King’s Langley, a quaint Hertfordshire village that is now a commuter suburb, 18 miles north of London. The prospering yeoman family at one time owned Jefferies farm in nearby Chipperfield (the Chip Carter connection?), and the King’s Langley church has a brass plaque in memory of Ancestor John Carter, departed this world in 1588. Another Carter, also named John, made it to London and, in Dick Whittington fashion, became a prosperous wine merchant. As befitted a new gentleman, he applied for a coat of arms in 1612; Carter Lane, off Fleet Street, still bears his name.

Two of Vintner John’s armigeral sons emigrated to the American colonies aboard the good ship Safety in 1635. Jimmy’s 11th generation ancestor Thomas became a well-to-do Virginia planter, while his elder brother John acquired an even richer swath of Old Dominion farm land. It was John’s son, Robert (“King”) Carter, who became the first American millionaire. According to Harold Brooks-Baker, Debrett’s managing director, hustling King Carter owned 300,000 acres, more than 1,000 slaves and perhaps the largest collection of books in the colonies —at a time, notes Brooks-Baker, when “wealth was measured by the number of fine volumes you had.” King was also a banker; his three Virginia estates are still owned by Carters, the Fest of the FFV (First Families of Virginia).

The Carters of Plains are distantly related to George Washington, and hence to Queen Elizabeth I, by intermarriage with the aristocratic Tookes and Newces of Hertfordshire and Virginia; they are also related to the Harrisons, the family that produced Presidents William Henry and Benjamin Harrison, and to the presidential Madisons. Family connections aside, says Brooks-Baker, “over the past six centuries, many of President Carter’s ancestors have reached positions of immense importance. Some were very intelligent, but they didn’t produce much with their brains. They were a little bit sleepy—like the President’s brother.”

The blue-blooding of Carter may come as a considerable surprise to the President’s family, which hitherto has traced its roots to a different and less-distinguished Virginia branch. (On his visit to England in June, Chip Carter apparently visited the wrong ancestral village, Christchurch, which is about 100 miles southwest of King’s Langley.) In any event, Carter’s onetime countrymen are delighted to find that the President of the U.S. is to the manor born, sort of. Says Brooks-Baker: “The English always wanted Carter to be an aristocrat.”