The Carter Journals
The Carter Journals
Time Travels in Early U.S. History
Shane Phipps
Indiana Historical Society Press
2014
Locations featured in Cody Carter’s journey. (Map by Stacy Simmer, 2014)
© 2014 Indiana Historical Society Press. All rights reserved.
This book is a publication of the
Indiana Historical Society Press
Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE
The Journal of Edward Carter: Beaufort, North Carolina, 1730
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
PART TWO
The Journal of Ethan Carter: Yadkin Valley Settlements, North Carolina, 1757
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
PART THREE
The Journal of Landon Carter: Fort Watauga at Sycamore Shoals, Washington District, North Carolina, 1775–76
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART FOUR
The Journal of Annabelle Carter: State of Franklin, 1788
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART FIVE
The Journal of Martin Carter: Fort Knox (Vincennes), Indiana Territory, 1811
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
PART SIX
The Journal of David Carter: Metamora, Indiana, 1846
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
PART SEVEN
The Journal of Andrew Carter: Corydon, Indiana, 1863
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Afterword
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
About the Author
Preface
I teach United States history to eighth graders. Some days I do a better job than others. Over my years in the classroom, I have discovered that my students usually learn best when I can come up with stories to tell them that go along with, or add to, the material in their textbook. For this reason, I am continually looking to further educate myself about the material I cover, which happens to be colonial America through the Civil War.
I look for stories that enhance what is in the textbook. I love it when I can find some little tidbits of information on the periphery of mainstream history, much like the famous broadcaster Paul Harvey’s essays called “The Rest of the Story.” When I can take my students off the beaten path of mainstream history with stories that don’t get as much coverage, their understanding and appreciation of the textbook is deepened.
When I started teaching, I realized that most of my students didn’t have a great deal of affection for history. They found it boring and pointless. Granted, if history is taught straight from textbooks as endless dates and battles, it can get a little dry for some folks’ tastes, even mine. The key is finding ways to make history come alive and, if at all possible, to make it connect to your life. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are all connected through history. Our ancestors wrote our history—they lived it. Too often, we are all guilty of losing sight of that.
A couple of years ago, I began to long for a book that my students might like to read—a book that paralleled the time line of what I teach, but which told stories in a more entertaining way than most history textbooks. I wanted to find a book that I could use in my classroom to lead my students off the well-worn trails of the textbook material to where we could stop and smell the roses around the edges of the stories—to learn and be entertained. I then had a very interesting notion: Instead of looking for such a book, why not just write it myself? I had always played with the idea of being a writer, but had never really pursued it. So I did it.
This is a work of historical fiction. Historical fiction is my favorite genre. I have learned a great deal of what I know about history from these types of books. Readers should know going into a book like this that it is not meant to be 100 percent accurate in every aspect. This book blends real people and events with fictional characters, events, and dialogue. While much research was done in setting as accurate a historical background for my story as possible, this is still my version of the events.
Readers should recognize many of the “mainstream” stories in this book. I use them to provide the proper context for other events that are not so well known, but that are to me no less important parts of America’s story. There is only so much room in our history textbooks, and therefore, publishers can’t possibly squeeze every story worth telling into them. I wanted to bring out some of the stories that don’t get told and place them in their rightful spot in the big picture.
While this book is primarily aimed at a teenage audience, I hope that adults will find it entertaining and informative as well. This is the type of book that can be read a little at a time or in one sitting. If you are looking for an epic that goes into minute details and exhausts a single subject, then you have come to the wrong place. I wrote this book specifically for those with short attention spans in mind. If you prefer a book that bounces along from scene to scene and era to era, digging up little nuggets of forgotten history along the way, then read on.
So the real purpose of this book—my not-so-hidden agenda—is to spark an interest in someone who didn’t think they had an interest in history. Enjoy travelling through history with Cody Carter. When you learn of some event that you weren’t aware of, do yourself a favor and dig a little deeper on your own. You may just be surprised at how much you really do like history.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank God for the many blessings He has given me. Without His guiding hand, I never would have had the ability to complete this project. (Philippians 4:13)
A big thanks to Jan Dorsey. Jan is a language arts teacher at my school. I wanted to have an “editor on the fly” to help me catch any mistakes and to make suggestions on how to make improvements to the book. I knew I could count on Jan to give me honest and critical feedback. Every time I would hammer out another chapter, I would run it down to Jan, and she would generally have it edited for me in a day or two. I really appreciate her efforts.
I would also like to thank my sister-in-law, Jeanne Stafford-Phipps, and my niece, Meredith Phipps. I would e-mail them new chapters and they would give me feedback. Meredith was in fourth grade at the time, so I used her as a gauge to make sure younger readers would be able to understand and appreciate the story.
Bruce Simon was my mentor teacher when I first started teaching history. He instilled in me the importance of reading as much as I could about the subject I teach. He also left me with many of his books when he retired. Thank you, Bruce.
I want to thank my parents, Hugh and Becky Phipps, for being so supportive and encouraging during the process of writing the book. They too read the chapters as I finished them, and their suggestions and feedback were valuable.
Special thanks to my wife, Jeanna, and my daughter, Molly. They were very supportive of me at home and put up wi
th me as I would often sit and write the story “in my head” while not being particularly attentive to them sometimes. I love you both.
I would also like to thank several people at the Indiana Historical Society Press for their work. Thanks to Ray Boomhower. When I first had the concept of the book, I e-mailed Ray, whom I remembered from when I worked part time at the IHS History Market years ago while in college. Ray saw potential in my idea and put me in touch with the proper people. Thanks to Elaine Rosa for helping me through the writing of the curriculum guide that goes with the book. Special thanks to Teresa Baer for believing in the project, all her work in the editing process, and mostly just for putting up with and supporting the needs of a first-time author. Thanks as well to the IHS Press staff who checked the facts, gathered the illustrations, and edited the book: Rachel Popma, Chelsea Sutton, Callie McCune, and Jennifer Banning.
Last but not least, I want to dedicate this book to my grandfather, Harry Phipps. He was the basis for Cody’s Grandpa Carter. He and my maternal grandfather, Olen McGinnis, who passed away years ago, were largely responsible for my love of history. Thankfully, Grandpa got to read my final draft of The Carter Journals. Sadly, he passed away on October 6, 2011 (aged ninety), before the book went to print, but he knew that it was going to be published and he was very proud of that. I am very proud of him.
Introduction
Cody Carter sat in the living room of his suburban Indianapolis home spellbound at the stories the old man was telling. The man was Cody’s paternal grandfather, John Carter, visiting Indiana from his home in Hawkins County, Tennessee. Cody loved to hear his grandfather tell tales because they usually were about his own family. The stories also usually revolved around history, which just happened to be Cody’s favorite subject in school. “Grandpa Carter is like a walking history book,” Cody would brag to his friends, who usually seemed unimpressed. Cody, now fourteen and in the eighth grade, often wondered why he seemed to be in the minority when it came to his love of history. Most of his friends just complained about history class. They said it was boring and pointless. Maybe, Cody thought, it’s because they don’t have a Grandpa Carter.
Grandpa Carter had always impressed upon Cody the importance of understanding your place in history. Thanks to his grandfather’s stories, Cody had a better appreciation for history. Sometimes it seemed like history was something that only happened in faraway places to long-ago people. Sometimes history didn’t seem very relevant. But when Cody heard Grandpa’s stories, he felt like he was being drawn into the historical time line. He could relate history to his own family.
Grandpa Carter once told Cody that the Carter family had come to America from England back in the colonial times. The name Carter meant “driver of carts,” so apparently, the English Carters must have been in that business way back when. Grandpa Carter had a wealth of material from which to draw his tales. The Carter family, it seemed, had always had a passion for recording their lives in the form of journals. It had become a time-honored family tradition for the Carters to keep journals, usually beginning when they were teenagers, and to pass them down to the next generation. When the Carter teens came of age, they also received the journals of the young Carters that had come before them. So as they started to record their own histories, they could also begin reading the histories of their teenage ancestors. This had kept more than a few Carter children very interested in history classes through the years. History means a lot more when you can trace your place in it.
Just now, Cody was learning about the day when his grandpa had begun his own journal. The year was 1944. John Carter was a thirteen-year-old who was forced into the role of the man of the house. His dad, Will Carter, had been called to service in the U.S. Army. John was forced to temporarily drop out of the eighth grade so he could help his mother and younger sister run the family’s small tobacco and cattle farm just outside of Rogersville, Tennessee. It was the very same one-hundred-acre mountain farm that Cody now loved to go and visit, but it was a tough life for a teenaged boy in 1944.
Cody sat and listened to Grandpa’s story, but he had heard some of this before. The stories that Cody really wanted to dig into were those in the box of old journals that Grandpa had brought to Indiana to leave in Cody’s possession. The journals had come down through the family from the very first generation of Carters in America—all the way back to 1730. Tomorrow, Cody planned to go right for the oldest one and begin working his way straight through the whole box.
Part One
The Journal of Edward Carter
Beaufort, North Carolina, 1730
Chapter 1
Cody woke up early the next morning. It was a Saturday, and he wasn’t used to waking up before ten o’clock on the weekends. But he’d been too excited to sleep. All night he had dreamed about what he might discover in that box of dusty old journals. Cody ran downstairs to see if Grandpa had left yet and was happy to see he was still sitting down eating breakfast. “Well, Cody, I didn’t expect you’d see me off this mornin’,” Grandpa said.
“I guess I was too excited to sleep in very late,” Cody replied. “I’m not sure my brain ever did go to sleep. I just hope those journals are half as exciting as my dreams—I had some real whoppers!”
Grandpa Carter leaned back and wiped a little bit of pancake syrup from the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “I reckon I don’t know what you dreamed about, but those journals are about real life. Real life ain’t always excitin’, but I guarantee it’s always educational, at least if you’re payin’ attention,” he said in his southern mountain drawl. “I expect there will be enough excitement in them to keep you well occupied, though.” The old man rose from the table. “Well, I have a six-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. Better get a move on—these old bones don’t like long car rides like they once did.”
“Summer vacation is right around the corner, Grandpa,” said Cody as he followed his grandfather to the door. “We’ll be down to visit real soon.”
“I’ll be lookin’ forward to it, Cody,” replied Grandpa. “Oh, and one more thing: Don’t let those journals pull you away from your school work now, you hear?”
“I won’t,” replied Cody, almost believing himself.
Grandpa got into his car, waved, and drove off. Cody normally felt sad when his grandfather left, but right now he was too eager to go through the journals to be sad.
Cody ran upstairs to his bedroom, where he had left the box of journals. He dug down to the bottom to retrieve the oldest one. It was leather bound, about the size of a paperback book. The leather was dry and crackled. Cody noticed that the book had a very old smell. A strong feeling suddenly came over him. These books are important and they are fragile, he thought. I had better treat these like I am borrowing them from a museum. He carefully opened the front cover and looked at the title page. The pages themselves were in surprisingly good shape—a little bit yellow, but they seemed pretty sturdy. Cody was a little relieved that the book wasn’t so brittle that it would shatter into dust the moment he turned the page. He suspected that other family members before him had felt the same feelings of responsibility that had just come over him. “This book has been well taken care of,” Cody heard himself whisper.
Cody read the words on the title page: The Journal of Edward Carter…Beaufort, North Carolina…1730. “Wow!” He paused to do a little mental math. “This thing is over 280 years old!” he exclaimed.
With great anticipation, Cody turned the page. He realized he was about to be transported almost three centuries back in time. He was about to relive the lives of some of his relatives when they were about his age.
What Cody didn’t realize was just how true this was. Cody Carter was about to take a very strange trip.
Cody began to read the words at the top of the journal’s first page.
I am Edward Carter. I am fourteen years of age. I live in Beaufort, North Carolina, with my mother and father, Elizabeth and Edward Sr.…
Cody started to feel st
range. As he continued to read, he felt as if he were falling down a deep, spinning mine shaft, or on a roller coaster, twisting through a dark tunnel. Suddenly, he stopped cold. Shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he looked around and found himself in a very small room in a very small house. He had what appeared to be a feather in his hand, but the pointed end of the feather was dripping with black ink. Cody recognized it as a quill pen used for writing back in olden times. He was sitting on a wooden stool in front of a desk with a tilted top. He seemed to have just finished writing in a black, leather-bound journal. The journal looked very much like the very book he had just been reading, only much, much newer. The room was fairly dark except for some light pouring through a window a few feet away. The floors of the house were wooden, and the room was sparsely furnished. What furniture there was appeared to be handmade of wood. A large stone fireplace along one wall seemed to be open to another room on the other side.
Cody looked down and saw that he was wearing different clothes. They were not his own, that was for sure. He had on black leather shoes and long white socks that stretched clear up past his knees and were tucked up under his brown pants, which Cody immediately recognized as knickers. His shirt was white and had very puffy sleeves. He was also wearing a vest. It was certainly not an outfit Cody would have picked out for himself, unless maybe it was for Halloween.
Cody heard some metallic sounds coming from the room on the other side of the fireplace. He sheepishly tiptoed toward the doorway between the two rooms and slowly peeked around the edge of the door opening. He saw a woman cooking over a black iron woodstove. She jumped back, obviously startled at the head peeking around at her. “Oh my, Edward dear! You near scared the life out of your poor old mother!” the woman exclaimed, in a sort of accent that seemed a cross between British and southern. “What are you doing, sneaking around like that, lad?” she said.