James R. Carter had ties to Lancaster County, Nebraska

I love the serendipity of genealogical research, especially when someone points out something right under your nose that you were not looking for and not expecting.  Not quite like winning the lottery but it’s still fun! 

I got one of those this week. 

Portrait and Biographical Album of Lancaster County, Nebraska published 1888 

I’ve used the Portrait and Biographical Album of Lancaster County, Nebraska many times.   My great, great grandfather Casper Martin (another branch of the family) is in there along with other shirt-tail relatives.  But an anonymous contributor commented on my January  blog entry “Cousins Die in Camp at Cape Girardeau in 1861” about James R. Carter (cousin of Thomas B. Turpin) and pointed to this Lancaster County history book as the source of more information on James Carter’s family.  Wow!  

The history was published in 1888 and has an entry for Joseph Epps, step-brother to James R. Carter.   The biography states that John and Charlotte Epps’ family consisted of Charlotte’s four children from her marriage to George Carter:  John, Riley, Eliza, and  William Carter;  and Christopher, Rachel, Agnes, Joseph, Mary, and Amanda who were the children of John and Charlotte.

The 1860 census of Warren County, Iowa shows them as John A., James R., E A D J Carter, and Wm E. Carter; and Chris Col, Rachel Agnes, Jos. Andrew, Mary Louisa, and Amanda Chris B J.

For anyone who may be researching that particular branch of the family, Anonymous adds:

It mentions Charlotte EVANS CARTER EPPS and at the time of writing was living in Mitchell, South Dakota ... William Elijah Carter's daughter Minnie Louise was married three times, [to] John H. Raner and had 6 children, William Frederick Holkan (widower with 5 children), and Louis Frederick Karsten in Nebraska.  She died sometime after 1950.  Lou was my great-great-uncle. 

The Portrait and Biographical Album of Lancaster County, Nebraska is a digitized book and the article on the Epps family can be found at:

http://www.archive.org/stream/portraitbiograph01chic#page/492/mode/2up

Follow-up on James R. Carter

In my Nov 12th blog post about the Iowa 10th Infantry and Thomas Benton Turpin, I mentioned James R. Carter who enlisted at the same time.  The Carters and the Turpins intermarried and I thought there might be a family connection: 

James R. Carter of Rippey enlisted as a Private on 23 August 1861 at the age of 18 in Company H, 10th Infantry Regiment Iowa on 7 Sep 1861.

James is the same age as Thomas.  Carter was probably Thomas’s grandmother’s maiden name. So looking to see if there is a connection could help me.  A bit of research shows there are no records of him in Greene County, Iowa in the 1860 census. I may want to scan the census in case the indexing is in error. I don’t see any James Carters in 1870 census that look like a potential match either. There is a 1890 Veteran’s Schedule which shows many James Carters. I guess this is a research project to put on my rainy day list.

Dennis Bell found the following entry for a James R. Carter in the 1860 census of Washington, Warren Co., Iowa.  Dennis suggested:

... he might be the James R. Carter (b. ABT 1843 in Indiana) who lived in Warren Co. IA in 1860?  See the below.  It appears to me that Charlotte (b. ABT 1820 in Indiana) is his mother, and that she remarried to John Epps and started a 2nd family.  John and Charlotte Epps were living in Washington, Greene, Iowa in the 1870 census.  John Epps was a widower in the 1880 census (Indianola, Warren, Iowa).