The Mysterious Case of the Carters

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The Mysterious Case of the Carters

Or,

How Hirohito Became Nick Carter's Aide

by Todd Rutt & Arn McConnell (Wold Atlas vol.1, no.2)

Families like the Carters are rare indeed. From the lush plantations of Virginia to the dim-lit streets of New York, from the dense Tennessee wilderness to the dead seas of Mars, they have battled relentlessly and successfully against the forces of evil. And yet, in the annals of Wold Newton, this important family has been sadly neglected. Perhaps this is because, on the surface, the problems presented by the Carter Family appear insurmountable. But now, thanks to our backbreaking and mindbending efforts (which will probably reap us nothing beyond the harsh criticism of those with less vision than ourselves), the true story has been uncovered.

The saga of the Carters is inseparably entwined with the very beginnings of our country. In 1649, a distressed loyalist by the name of John Carter (first level on the family tree) moved his family from their ancestral home in Buckinghamshire, England, to the settlement of Corotoman, Virginia, in the New World. Carter was a man dedicated to his mother country and his king, who became disgruntled when he saw the king's power being siphoned away by the rising democracy in England. He moved to America, where he felt he could be sure of his community's loyalty to their liege. Carter and his family prospered there in the Colonies. Within fourteen years, he and his wife had successfully established a plantation in Corotoman.

It was in 1663, six years before his death, that Carter's wife, Sarah, gave birth to their son, Robert. Although he had little chance to become well-acquainted with the boy before his demise, he could surely tell from his young son's vivacity that the child would go on to become even more important and influential that his father.

Robert Carter was described by one of his contemporaries, Fairfax Harrison, as a "man of tremendous energy, shrewd business habits, dominant personality, and accustomed to success in whatever he undertook." As evidence of these traits, Robert "King" Carter (as he soon became known), built a lavish mansion in Corotoman and amassed an estate of 3,000 acres, 1,000 slaves, and ten thousand pounds by the time of his death.

The Virginian Northern Neck provided the perfect atmosphere for a man such as "King" Carter. He found out early that land meant power in the New World. According to George P. Willison in Behold Virginia, "In one year alone--1724--he (Carter) granted patents to himself, his sons, and his grandsons for almost 87,000 acres."

But Carter, beyond being a power-hungry landowner, was also a man who sought the acceptance and respect of his Virginian peers. He single-handedly financed the building of a church in the vicinity of Corotoman and sat proudly in his family pew every Sunday upon its construction. He was also generous with his massive land holdings, giving thousands of acres to friends and family. Of course, being one of the largest landowners in Virginia, he could easily afford to.

The King married twice, the first time to Judith Armistead (second level) and, when she died in 1699, he married Elizabeth Landon (also second level). From these unions, his sons Charles, Landon, Robert and Robin were born.

According to The Virginia Magazine of History, "in 1728, 'King' Carter, his sons Robin and Charles, and his son-in-law, Mann Page of Rosswell, organized the Frying Pan Company to mine copper in the cuprous sandstone formation on the present boundary of Fairfax and Loudon (counties in Virginia)." The significance of this site will be explained later.

Carter was obviously a man of fine stock. Among his descendants are two Presidents of the United States (not the present one), six governors of Virginia, and General Robert E. Lee.

All the information cited so far is documented historical fact, available to anyone wishing to look it up. From here, the story of the Carters takes a darker, more mysterious path--a path destined to lead the Carters to all parts of the world....and even to other worlds.

In about 1725, a boy was born in Virginia by the name of John Carter. At the time, virtually the only Carters in that province were the descendants of the original John Carter through Robert "King" Carter. Ergo, it follows that the John Carter born in 1725 (fourth level) was the grandson of the King. From evidence that will be brought forth later, it would appear that the newborn Carter's sire was Charles Carter. This young child was named, obviously, after his father's grandfather. No one could have realized at the time that Edgar Rice Burroughs was to make the name of John Carter immortal in his famous Barsoom series.

That Burroughs' John Carter was descended from the historical Carter is reinforced by Burroughs' description of the Barsoomian warlord. Time and Again it is impressed upon us that, above being an Earthman and an American, John Carter is a Virginian! A man that takes such fierce pride in his home state must surely have strong roots there, and it is to be remembered that the historical Carters, descended from John Carter I, were the original Virginian Carters.

We know little of John's early life. His father probably took him to Fairfax County many times during the Frying Pan days. When John came of age to leave home, he was given a parcel of land in Fairfax. The reason behind this assumption will be explained later.

It was after the age of 30 that John Carter realized he was different from other men. For he never aged a day after that point. John Carter discovered that he was immortal.

About John's immortality, nothing is known. Burroughs (whether through ignorance or design) is vague about it. All that is said of the fact, in Princess of Mars, is (John Carter speaking) "...so far as I can recollect, I have always been a man, a man of about thirty." Who can account for this mysterious longevity? Unlike that of Tarzan, Fu Manchu, or Sherlock Holmes, it appears that Carter's lack of deterioration is natural. Whether it was a gift of God or genetic mutation or something else, we do not know.

Carter's life on Earth was marked by his frustration in his marriages. That he was married is an unavoidable conclusion, being raised in Virginia where multiple marriages were common. From the evidence we have gathered, he appears to have married at least three times. All the marriages w uncovered were in the 19th century, so he may have been ( and probably was) married previously.

In 1825 or thereabouts, John Carter married Sarah Carter of Virginia, a distant relative also descended from John Carter-1 and named after his third wife. Sarah bore John one son, George Fairfax Carter. P Hopkinson Smith tells of George 50 years later in his book, Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891). The book describes Col. Carter as a tall, graying man living at Carter Hall in Fairfax County, Virginia. Smith even goes so far as to tell us that Col. Carter's father was John Carter, who was believed dead in 1875. Nor can it be ignored that the Colonel's feelings toward his native state are practically identical to those expressed by Burroughs' Carter. "I am a Virginian, suh," is how the Colonel puts it. His card reads, "Colonel George Fairfax Carter of Carter Hall, Cartersville, Virginia." The book states that "he omits 'United States of America' simply because it would add nothing to his identity or his dignity." How similar is this to John Carter's cry of "Virginia first!"

Col. Carter's mother had to be a Carter, although there is no textual reference to her in Colonel Carter. In fact, the only woman in the book is the Colonel's elderly aunt, Miss Nancy Carter. It is stressed in the book that Miss Nancy never wed. Therefore, since she could not have been John Carter's sister (she was elderly, but not that elderly), she had to be Sarah's. It is quite likely that Sarah and Nancy were descended from the original John Carter who was the first of the Virginian Carters, and thus a direct ancestor of John Carter, Sarah's husband. (Smith's description of John Carter in Colonel Carter as a silver haired general can be dismissed as either ignorance of the facts or misinformation. The truth of the matter is that John Carter only reached the rank of Captain in the Confederate Army, and his hair has always been a shade of bonny black.)

One last note on the Colonel: he did not inherit his father's immortality. Apparently this "mutation," if mutation it was, was a recessive trait, or perhaps transdominant.

Carter's second wife was Margaret K. Butler, sister of the famed Rhett Butler and cousin to Oread Butler (see Tarzan Alive). Carter married her in 1860, shortly before the Civil War.

A brief history of the Butler Family is in order here. The earliest American Butler of note was James Butler (level one), a Revolutionary War hero. James lived in Virginia, so it is possible that the Butlers and Carters met many years before John Carter was to marry into the family. James was killed in the Revolutionary War.

William Butler (second level) was one of James' eight children. He moved from the Butler's Virginia home to South Carolina, and became a prominent member of the community there. On June 3, 1784, he married Behethland Foote Moore (second level) who was to bear his eight children.

William's son, James, continued to live in Charleston like his father, where he married and settled down. Three of his children are mentioned in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: Rhett, that famous black-eyed adventurer; his sister, Rosemary; and a brother whose name is never given. It seems likely that James Butler had more children than these, since his was a traditional Southern family, where large numbers of children were the rule.

The characters of Rhett Butler and John Carter are remarkably similar. Both were Southerners and adventurers, who had traveled all over the world. Both were excellent horsemen. It appears that the two first came into contact in Europe, where they naturally fell in together. When they returned to their native country, Rhett introduced John to his younger sister, Margaret, and Carter was instantly smitten. His first wife^*, Sarah, apparently died c. 1843, Carter having outlived her as he was to do with most of his wives. Carter was beginning to doubt the very institution of marriage, what with his continuous frustration, but he didn't allow his reason to overcome his love for Margaret K. Butler. They were married soon after they met. Unfortunately, their honeymoon was interrupted by the Civil War.

Carter, with his swordsmanship and horsemanship and his 6'2" frame, found himself in the thick of the fighting. He was not in the Confederate Army long before he had attained the rank of captain. Meanwhile, Rhett Butler also became a captain, although he was primarily in blockade running. After the War, John returned home to his wife. (It is likely that they were not living at Carter Hall at this period of time; they may have been living with Margaret's family in South Carolina.) In late 1865 or early 1866, their son, Nicholas, was born. Rhett Butler returned to Atlanta, where he wooed and wed Scarlett O'Hara. (An interesting and provocative point of note is that, in GWTW, Rhett says that, when his daughter by Scarlett, Bonnie Blue, is old enough to ride, he'll "take here to Virginia." Why else would Rhett plan this unless he intended to take her to visit Carter Hall?)

According to GWTW, Rhett left Scarlett in early 1872. It was about this time that John Carter's wife, Margaret, died, leaving him to care for young Nick. At the same time, the Carter estate in Fairfax was becoming more and more impoverished. With that resolution that was to mark him on Mars, Carter decided to visit New York and leave his son under the care of John's distant cousin, Sim Carter, a detective (seventh level). More on Sim later.

This took care of the problem posed by Nick's presence. It can be assumed reasonably that John Carter had every intention of retrieving his son after his financial straits were resolved. Unfortunately, he never had the chance.

Rhett and John, the two old war buddies, one of whom had just lost his wife and the other left his, drifted across the country to Arizona, where they mined gold for three years. In 1875. they hit a huge vein of gold and all seemed to be going well until a band of Apaches attacked them. John rescued the mortally-wounded Rhett from the Indian camp and hid out in a cave where something transported him to the strange world of Barsoom (See Caves, Gas & The Great Transfer Theory by Rutt & McConnell). The fate of Butler can only be guessed at. Did he die there in the cave from his countless arrow wounds, or was he too transported by that strange "substance" to another world?

It was on Mars, or Barsoom as the natives call it, that John Carter met his ideal mate--the immortal Barsoomian princess, Dejah Thoris. Dejah gave birth (in that strange Martian way) to two children from John, Carthoris and Tara. Carthoris, whose adventures are chronicled in Burroughs' Thuvia, Maid of Mars, was named after his parents. Tara was named in honor of Carter's friend, Rhett, after Scarlett O'Hara's much-beloved plantation, of which Butler doubtless told Carter many times. The lovely Tara's story is told in Chessmen of Mars.

But wait! According to Burroughs in A Princess of Mars, the year that Carter mined gold was not 1875 but 1865, and his partner at the time was not Capt. Rhett Butler of Charleston but Capt. James K. Powell of Richmond. How are these differences accounted for?

Edgar Rice Burroughs was never one to waste space with unnecessary details, and no doubt he felt the ten-year hiatus between the end of the Civil War and Carter's migration to Mars was of dubious value to his story at hand. We tend to believe that Burroughs' statement that he could remember Carter bouncing him on his knee in the introduction to Princess was a clue to this ten-year discrepancy. It should be recalled that Burroughs was born in 1875, ten years after he has Carter making his interplanetary journey. This is all not to mention the fact that Burroughs gave very little time for Carter and his partner to do all they were supposed to have done.

Are Rhett Butler and James K. Powell one and the same? Remember, Butler's father and great-grandfather were both named James. His sister's middle initial was K. And Powell? The name Powell is derived from the Welsh surname of ap-Howell, meaning "eminent." Certainly the Butler family was one of the most eminent in Charleston. This is also the reason he gives Richmond instead of Charleston for "Powell's" home town. Were he to tell the truth there, many people would know who this "Powell" was meant to be. For those of you who doubt Butler's capability as a gold hunter, we refer you to GWTW, which tells us that he traveled to California during the 1849 gold rush.

This all sounds far-fetched until one recalls the pains Burroughs went to with names. A Princess of Mars itself was originally published under the name of "Norman Bean," which was a misprint of Burroughs' chosen pseudonym of "Normal Bean."

One last note concerning Rhett Butler. In GWTW, Rhett tells Scarlett, "I had a grandfather on the Butler side who was a pirate." William Butler was obviously no pirate. But it is likely that Butler was not speaking of his actual Butler grandfather here. Remember that William Butler married Behethland Foote Moore, who had been married previously to a Moore of whom we can find no trace in any biographical work. Hence, we postulate that this Moore was probably a privateer during the Revolutionary War. This is the man that Rhett, figuratively speaking, calls his grandfather, the pirate.

Before describing the history of John Carter's son, Nick, it is necessary to follow the other side of the Carter family, backtracking up to Robert "King" Carter.

We start at the King's marriage to Elizabeth Landon. Their son, Landon Carter, was named in her honor. Then we come to John Carter, a historical pioneer in the province that is now Tennessee. According to The Dictionary of American Biography, John Carter is believed to have some relation to "King" Carter, "but the precise relationship has not been determined." (Henceforth, we shall refer to this John Carter as John Carter-3, to avoid confusion with the original John Carter and Burroughs' Carter.)

It is a known fact that John Carter-3's son was named Landon. It would therefore seem extremely likely that John Carter-3 was the son of Landon Carter, and thus the grandson of Robert "King" Carter.

John Carter-3 was born in 1737 in Virginia. He married in 1758 and 12 years later emigrated west to what is now Tennessee. He had only one son, the forementioned Landon, in 1760.

Landon built a good reputation for himself in Tennessee (Carter County there is named for him), and in 1784 he married Elizabeth Maclin. Later that same year his first son, Alfred Moore Carter, was born.

Alfred lived in the county seat of Carter County, Elizabethton, named after his mother. Another of Landon's sons, Abner Carter, was to become an important man in the South. The only other son Landon Carter is known to have had is Rufus Carter .

Abner and Rufus are brought to our attention by Melville Davisson Post, whose mysterious detective character, "Uncle Abner," is never given a last name. Now, though, we can say with reasonable assurance that Uncle Abner was a Carter. Abner was to provide a good example for many of his nephews (he never had any children of his own). Samuel Powhatan Carter, the son of Alfred Carter was known to be a very pious man, as was Abner; and Abner's detective work was to deeply influence Rufus' sons, Martin and Sim. It is likely that Abner provided Sim with the inspiration that drove the latter to New York, where he established his own private detective practice.

Around 1872, Sim was approached by his distant cousin, John Carter-2 (Burroughs'). Carter brought his young son Nick to New York and left him in Sim's care. Nick fell right in with Sim's family, which included the detective's daughter, Jane, who was quite a bit older than Nick, and his son, Chickering, who was about a year younger. Nick came to regard Sim as his father almost immediately, and when Nick's real father disappeared three years later, Sim came to like upon Nick as his son. Indeed, it seems likely that he went so far as to adopt the young Nicholas.

Nick grew to be a strong, intelligent young man, with his father's steel-grey eyes and black hair. He became interested in Sim's detective work at an early age, and when he was about 19, became a junior partner (along with Chickering) in Sim's business.

Nick's first case as a detective was also to prove the start of a long literary career. The story is told in a fictionalized version by John Russell Coryll, "The Old Detective's Pupil," the titular investigator being Sim Carter. The story appeared in serialized form in New York Weekly, in the fall of 1886. It is in the course of this case that Nick meets his future wife, Ethel. This story was to be the start of a seemingly endless line of Nick Carter adventures that continues to this very day.

Nick took Chick under his wing and made him his chief assistant and muscle boy throughout the time he worked in his early years as a detective. Some of his other assistants during this period are Patsy Murphy Garvan, Ida Jones, and Ten-Ichi. Ten-Ichi, particularly, is an interesting character. Described in the Nick Carter texts as "the son of the Emperor of Japan," it appears that he was really none other that Hirohito, the present Emperor. He worked under Nick in the year 1921, when the world believed him to be visiting Europe. Nick's friendship with Hirohito is ironic, since 20 years later they would find themselves on opposite sides in a World War.

About 1901, Ethel gave birth to Nick's only son, Horace J. Carter (level six). Although Nick didn't realize it at the time, a curious phenomena had manifested itself. He had inherited his father's immortality, and had stopped aging around 1895, so that he, like his father, would be perpetually 30 years of age.

In the years between 1923 and 1932, Nick's wife Ethel grew ill and eventually died. By this time, she was a woman of 50 or more, whereas physically Nick was still in his prime. The detective was experiencing the same thing his father, the soldier, had; he was outliving his loved ones. This period, 1923-1932, is the first of Nick Carter's Hiatuses. For the first time in almost 40 years, the American public heard nothing of Nick's fate. We feel it is likely Nick was traveling abroad during this period.

When Nick reappeared in 1932, he was a changed man. This was not the wise, middle-class Machiavellian Nick Carter of before; in his place was the new Nick, more wise-cracking than wise, more rich than middle-class, more by-the-book than Machiavellian. He was, in short, the Nick Carter of the Depression. He moved away from his house of old off Madison Avenue, to a lavish manse on Fifth Avenue; he took a Filipino houseboy, "whose name was changed every time Nick Carter felt like it;" he learned to fly his own plane. But above all, Nick is tough. maybe it was Ethel's death that changed him from a good-natured detective to a cynical dick. Maybe it was his era, when a good-natured detective was synonymous for a dead detective. Regardless of the reason, Nick Carter is not the same here as he was in his early years.

Nick's literary life during this, his Middle Period, lasted all of five years (we may safely assume that Nick's radio program and comic book series are fictitious). In 1937, he disappeared again, not to be heard from until 1964.

All this time, Nick's son Horace had been growing up. He rarely, if ever after his mother's death, saw his father. We tend to believe that Chick Carter took young Horace under his wing during Nick's years abroad, although there is no evidence to indicate such. We do know that in 1919, while Ethel was still alive, Horace was sent to Blakely College somewhere "in the South." No doubt Blakely was located either in Virginia or South Carolina, since Nick's roots were there.

Horace was an excellent scholar, but he couldn't shake the detective's lure that was so strong in his family. Aside from being a university teacher, he also proved his worth as an investigator. However, only one of his adventures has been documented , a murder case in 1945 that occurred while he was vacationing in Nantucket. the story is told in the book, The Widow's Walk, by Margaret Yates and Paula Bramlette. In it, Horace makes several references to "Yankees", which would tend to support his Southern heritage. He eventually retired to the unused Carter Hall (which had been vacant since the death of George Fairfax Carter), and hired a butler by the name of Smithers.

Horace appears to have married twice, once quite early in his life, and once fairly late. His first daughter, Peggy (named after his grandmother, Margaret Butler), was born c. 1925, during Horace's first marriage; Peggy was to become an Allied agent during WWII. His only other two children, Sharon and Cinnamon, were the fruit of his second marriage, and both were born sometime in the years 1940-1945. Sharon and Cinnamon, like their half-sister before them, went into intelligence work for the U.S. government. Cinnamon became a top agent for the Impossible Missions Force, a small group of agents involved in covert field operations. Sharon became, in the words of SHIELD Director Nick Fury, "one of our top agents!" As most of our readers probably know, both Peggy and Sharon Carter have had affairs with that great crimefighter, Captain America. (The fact that Peggy and Sharon are half-sisters, by the way, rather than full sisters, explains why Peggy has dark hair and Sharon blonde.) Sharon, today, is still going with Captain America, while Peggy is currently going with SHIELD agent Gabe Jones. One wonders what her Southern ancestors would say to see her in love with a black.

(Should anyone out there doubt Peggy or Sharon's Southern heritage, they should turn to Captain America # 163, where it says...."let us now turn our attention to the sunny Southland, specifically, the great state of Virginia, wherein rests the ancient family manse of the Carters, whose present members are quite good friends of ours." The underscoring is ours.)

In 1964, Nick Carter returned. We now learn that Nick has kept quite busy during his missing years, 1937-1964. He was in Europe during WWII, after which he was in the OSS for five years. One wonders if he knew Nick Fury, whose post-WWII trek was virtually identical. He graduates from the OSS to a super-secret agency known only as AXE in 1950. Since the first "new" Nick Carter book specifically states that Carter entered the OSS immediately after WWII, and then he spent seven years with AXE since he "graduated," we can place this story in 1957. This means that Nick's second Hiatus lasted almost 20 years.

If Nick was a changed man after his first hiatus, he is a totally different person after his second. These days, his three closest friends are weapons; Wilhelmina, a 9mm. Luger that Nick stole from the SS barracks in Munich; Hugo, an Italian stiletto; and Pierre, a tiny crystal ball containing deadly X-5 nerve gas. it is perhaps a significant display of Nick's new personality that he would name his weapons for the three major European Axis nations--Germany, Italy, and Vichy France.

That leaves us with only one loose end: Jane Carter, Sim's daughter. Jane married a man named Lee who was, according to PJF, a cousin of Robert E. Lee, who, as we have already learned, was himself descended from Robert Carter. Their daughter, Jane Carter Lee, lived in Richmond, Virginia. She married Professor Archimedes Q. Porter when he was in his late 40's and bore him Jane Porter--the same Jane Porter who was to marry Tarzan, Lord Greystoke (for the story as PJF tells it, see Tarzan Alive.)

The Carters. Certainly a most formidable family of heroes, and deserving a place in the ranks of the Wold Newton Family. now their story has been told.

We think Captain America said it best, in that selfsame issue #163 of his magazine. As he chased the Serpent Squad through the Virginia forests with Peggy Carter, he spoke these immortal words--

"Are all you Carters so gung ho?"

The answer, dear Captain, is an unequivocal yes.