I have traced them back to a Louisiana family born in Virginia and settled in Louisiana, possibly in servitude, possibly partially not. I have the given names of a Carter father & mother (Charles and Fannie, both born ca 1820s-30s) three of their children (Jane b. abt 1845, Moton/Mouton/Molton/Morse abt ’57 and Fanny abt 1860. There may be more) and of a grandmother with a different surname, Charlotte Thomas, abt 1815) all from Virginia (with the exception of the younger Fannie, who may have been born in Louisiana) but I haven’t found all of them anywhere, just some in the 1880s and onward - in Ascencion. and I’ve never found Charles and Fannie on a census, only on the death certificates of their various children.

A Dr. Robert Carter of Virginia owned the Lake and Vidalia plantations of Concordia Parish in the 1860s, and apparently these plantations are the first place to look for black Carters in ante-bellum Louisiana. (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/surna...) I have been able to follow him back to his Virginia property: Carter is the oldest son of Thomas Nelson Carter (1800-1883) and Juliet Muse Gaines (1806-1834). THomas inherited a plantation home called "Pampatike" in King William County, Virginia from his parents, another Dr. Robert Carter (1774-1805). The grandfather and namesake of the Concordia Parish Robert, was sixth generation owner of the Shirley Plantation in Virginia, descended through Robert ‘King’ Carter’s eldest son John. In 1787,the elder Robert’s father Charles Carter was the largest slave holder in Virginia, “listed…as owning 35,108 acres of property and 785 slaves distributed throughout ten counties.” http://www.shirleyplantation.com/slavery.html So that's a lot of Carters. Though the elder Robert opposed slavery, he didn’t inherit the family properties before his death. However, in his will he was able to stipulate “that the slaves were to remain on the plantation and that slave families were not to be separated when Shirley was divided between his four children.”

It is this that give me hope of finding my Carters, either in the movement of the younger Robert Carter’s slaves to Louisiana as a family, the sale of a family unit from his older brother's Shirley holdings. Any suggestions on collection work done on these issues?