Carter, Richard, Homesite

The plaque calls Carter one of the area's wealthiest slave owners. The numbers come from the tax rolls. A 1983 history by Shawn Bonath Carlson for Texas A&M's Archaeological Research Laboratory found five enslaved people in 1850 and twenty-two in 1860, when they made up about half of his taxable property at an average of $800 each. His cattle grew from 350 to about 1,000. At the family cemetery, Carlson reported, Richard and Elizabeth were buried inside a fenced enclosure and enslaved people outside it; how many is unknown.

What the plaque says

Carter, Richard, Homesite In 1831, Richard Carter (1789-1863), Virginia native and War of 1812 veteran, came from Alabama and received a grant of land within the Stephen F. Austin Colony at the site of what is now the City of College Station. He became one of the area's wealthiest land and slave owners, raising cattle, corn, and cotton during the years before the Civil War. Carter was appointed to the first Board of Commissioners after Brazos County was created in 1841 and helped survey Boonville, its first county seat. Evidence of the Carter home and the family cemetery has been found in this area. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 3.8 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Navasota — 22 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 22 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Texas A&M University — 1.6 mi
• Shiloh Community — 2.1 mi
• Texas A&M Corps of Cadets — 2.4 mi
• Texas AMC and WWI — 2.4 mi