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Welcome to Carter
County Missouri Genealogy Research
Pioneer Day, Ellsinore
1905
My name is Bob
Jenkins and I created this
website to provide genealogy
information and links to genealogy
information to assist people in
researching
their Carter County Missouri
ancestors.
I would appreciate any
contribution that you would like to
make to this site:
biographies, obituaries, birth,
marriage, death info, grave info,
photographs....etc
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Use the box below to
search
for Carter
County Data
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Brief
History:
When the Missouri legislature
created Carter County on March 10, 1859,
it named the county after Zimri A. Carter.
Zimri A. Carter (1794–1870), the man
for whom Carter County was named, was born
in South Carolina. In 1807,
at the age of 13, he came to
Missouri with his parents. The Carter
family initially settled in what is now
Warren
County. Shortly after his arrival in
Missouri Zimri Carter joined up with a
party of traders traveling the Missouri
and Mississippi rivers in flat
boats, and was away for a number of years.
In his absence his father Benjamin Carter
traded a horse and a cow for a large
tract of land in what was then Wayne
County, about eight miles southeast of
where the town of Van Buren would
eventually be established. When Zimri
Carter returned from his trading
ventures he joined his father in
farming their new homestead. (Various
sources give dates as early as 1812 and as
late as 1820 for Zimri Carter's
arrival in the area.) Zimri Carter became
one of the most influential and respected
men in southeast Missouri and was
instrumental in bringing about the
creation of Carter County and served for a
time as county judge of Carter
County. The Carters were soon followed by
other families: the Chilton, Kenard,
Snider and Kelly families, who,
along with the Carters opened up large
tracts of wilderness land.
Carter County was created from
portions of Ripley, Shannon and Wayne
counties. On the first Monday of April
1859, three men (Adam Lane of Ripley
County, John Bulford of Reynolds County
and D.C. Reed of Shannon
County) met at the home of James
Brown to select a seat for the newly
created Carter County. They selected Van
Buren which, until 1847, had been
the county seat of Ripley County. At the
time of its creation, Carter County was
attached to Ripley County for the
purpose of representation in the General
Assembly. The old log-cabin courthouse,
which had been erected in Van Buren
in 1853, continued to be used as the
Carter County Courthouse until it was
replaced by a wood-frame building in
1867.
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