Spencer Leslie Carter

Notes:

His birth year of 1873 confirmed by a close look at the photo and of the transcripts of his brother Thomas N. Carter; mentioning that his brother Spencer was not born until 1873.

"Of Spencer?s early life I know very little, as I left Pampatike for the University when he was only three years old, but I do remember that as a baby he had croup very badly and that many nights I have helped my mother by walking the floor with him when he would be almost strangled. Spencer was named Spencer Leslie Carter after Spencer Leslie France, who was the son of Spencer France of Baltimore, my father?s adjutant during the war. Mr. France was quite badly wounded in the war and convalesced at Pampatike. After the war he sent his son, who was just my age, to Pampatike. Spencer France was killed at Pampatike while coon hunting with Willie Bruce and myself, in the marsh near Goodwin?s Creek (the dam creek) east of the sandy field and south of Shop Spring meadow. We cut down a tree, thinking there was a coon in it; it lodged in another tree, catching the limb of a third tree between the two; when we cut down the second tree, the limb of the third tree was peeled off from the trunk of the tree and struck him on the head. We got the overseer who was working in a field nearby to come into the marsh and carry him out, and I went after the doctor. He was taken to the house in a wagon and died before the doctors got
there. This was somewhere in February. I know it was very cold and the ground covered with snow. Mrs. France, in May, about the time Spencer was born, came down to Pampatike to see the place where her son was killed, and asked my mother to name her baby after her son, which was done. Spencer afterwards went to and graduated at the Virginia Military Institute and worked under Mr. Dabney, a civil engineer on the Seaboard Airline, living at Portsmouth, Va. He then worked for the
Virginia Carolina Chemical Company in Richmond, a part of the time as traveling auditor. While in Richmond he lived at our house. From this last place he was promoted to the position of Manager and then President of the Rasin Monumental Company, Baltimore, which is a branch of the Virginia Carolina Chemical Company, and married Berta Atkinson, second daughter of your cousin Thomas Atkinson, and has two children, Eda Atkinson and Susan Roy."
contributed by Member 47059533