The Carter Farm

The Carter Farm. Life on the Farm. Fountain Branch Carter bought nineteen acres of Columbia Pike from Angus McPhail in 1829 and completed his house the next year for himself, his wife Polly, and their children. The farm’s prosperity was directly connected to the four to fifteen slaves who lived and labored on it., By 1860, Carter built a cotton gin that processed 30 bales (12,000 pounds) of cotton. He also grew wheat, potatoes, corn, and oats; he had a large apple and peach orchard; his livestock was valued at $3,000., The farm had grown to 250 acres, and 28 slaves lived and worked here. Their lives and their owners’ were closely intertwined, and they often worked long hours beside each other, plowing, planting, and harvesting. The Carter sons – Moscow, Tod, James, and Francis – often labored alongside slaves such as Jack and Wiley., Fountain Carter died in 1871 and Moscow Carter took over the farm. He grew more corn, wheat, and potatoes as the demand for cotton declined. He wrote, “Cotton seems so tedious and expensive to manage. I dread it.” Because it could still be lucrative, however, he continued to grow it on a smaller scale into the 1880s with the help of ten laborers to help harvest and process the crop. America Carter, his second wife, wrote “It is all we can do to make a living and we all work all the time. Just so we can keep what we have and live is all we are trying to do.”