Landon Carter (284)

Landon Carter (18 August 1710–22 December 1778) was a planter, public officeholder, and slaveholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1769. Born the son of a planter-merchant and member of the King’s Council in Lancaster County Virginia, Carter went to England while young to begin schooling. He returned to Virginia in 1726 to study at the College of William and Mary before leaving to assist his aging father in his tobacco planting business. In 1732, Carter’s father died, leaving his son with a large inheritance with which he settled in Richmond the following year. Within no time he became justice of the county court, then vestryman of his parish, then colonel in the militia, all through his high-born, well-educated, and wealthy status. Starting in 1752 he represented his county in the house of Burgesses as an elected legislator. Carter always advocated for colonial self-governance while still maintaining a strong belief in the English monarchy. Apprehensive of the more radical factions of the American Independence movement, he supported independence nonetheless. In his political writings, he enforced the Whig view that noble gentry were natural rulers, and merchants and workers were untrustworthy as leaders. This also reflects the themes of his famous journals, in which he mingles feudal English sentiments and folklore with the happenings at his plantation: swapping serfs and servants for slaves and lord for patriarch. His diaries also consist of scientific reports regarding the keeping of his farmland and the health conditions of the enslaved people working there. He died of an edema in his country residence, Sabine Hall. (ANB, DNB)