Robert Carter was born at Corotoman Plantation in Lancaster County, Virginia, to John Carter of London, England, and Sarah Ludlow of Maiden Bradley, Wiltshire. In 1688, he married Judith Armistead of Hesse in Gloucester County, an area which was included in the formation of Mathews County in 1691. After her death in 1699, he married Elizabeth Landon in 1701. At age 28, Robert Carter entered the General Assembly of Virginia as a Burgess from Lancaster County, serving five consecutive years. In 1726, as President of the Governor's Council, he served as acting Governor of Virginia after the death of Governor Hugh Drysdale. As an agent of Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax of Cameron – known simply as Lord Fairfax – he served two terms as agent for the Fairfax Proprietary of the Northern Neck of Virginia. During his first term, 1702–1711, he began to acquire large tracts of land for himself in the Rappahannock River region of Virginia. Carter acquired some, a large part of which was the Nomini Hall Plantation, also spelled "Nomoni" or "Nominy," which he purchased in 1709 from the heirs of Col. Nicholas Spencer, cousin of the Lords Culpeper, from whom the Fairfaxes had inherited their Virginia holdings. When he became representative of Fairfax's interests again in 1722, serving from 1722–32, he secured for his children and grandchildren about in the Northern Neck, as well as additional land in Virginia west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Carter died on 4 August 1732, in Lancaster County, Virginia, and was buried there at Christ Church. He left his family 300,000 acres of land, 3,000 enslaved humans and £10,000 in cash, as stated in the academic genealogical study, A Genealogy of the Known Descendants of Robert Carter of Corotoman, authored by Florence Tyler Carlton in 1982.
Legacy
When Lord Fairfax saw Carter's obituary in the London monthly The Gentleman's Magazine, he was astonished to read of the immense personal wealth acquired by his resident land agent. Rather than name another Virginian to the position, Fairfax made arrangements to have his cousin, Colonel William Fairfax, move to Virginia to act as land agent, with the paid position of customs inspector for the Potomac River district. Fairfax himself then visited his vast Northern Neck Proprietary from 1735–37, and he moved there permanently in 1747.
Descendants
Carter had five children with his first wife, Judith Armistead:
Sarah Carter
Elizabeth Carter married Nathaniel Burwell.
Judith Carter died in infancy before her mother and buried near her at Christ Church
William Nelson Page American civil engineer and industrialist.
James "Gentleman Jim" Robinson, one of the wealthiest African Americans in the Manassas area, but is also known because his homestead was located between the lines of the Confederate and Union armies during two major battles of the Civil War.
