Joseph Demont CARTER

                   Notes: Taken from the History of the Carter Family written by Ellen (Ella) Winn Kessel, 1951-1952, aided by contributions from various members of the family. She was the granddaughter of Joseph Demont Carter

After living in Ohio, until nine of his ten children were born, the family moved to Indiana, in the autumn of 1850.  They settled in Dick Johnson Township, Clay County, where some members of the family still live.  At that time there were no roads, very few clearings, just a wilderness of virgin timber.  The city of Brazil was just in the beginning, and Terre Haute only a small village, the only Post Office being at Cloverland on the National road.  Grandfather and his older sons felled trees and built a cabin in which the parents and eight children lived for several years, while he cleared land and ran a saw mill and farmed.  Finally he built a five room frame house which continued to be the family home for many years.

Joseph Demont Carter's last son, born after they arrived in Indiana died at the age of three weeks. Their son Cassius had died at seven or eight years while they still lived in Ohio, and was buried at Mason, Ohio.  At the time of the death of the baby boy, there were few cemeteries or burying grounds, as they were called then, in these Indiana communities, and it was the custom, when death came to the families of the settlers, for the burial to be made in a favorite field or pasture on the family farm.  So this baby was buried near where the Baltimore and Ohio Railrad now runs, which later was built through the township.