Ancestors

Hosea B. G. Carter

Hosea B. G. Carter was born on 3 November 1839 in Knox County, Ohio, the sixth of the eleven children of Timothy Carter and Charlotte Wilson. His father was born in 1804 and his mother in 1809. Both were natives of Massachusetts, where they married, and they went west to Ohio among its early settlers. Timothy Carter was a wagon maker by trade as well as a farmer. His own father, John Carter, was born, raised and died in Massachusetts.

In 1844, when Hosea was four, the family moved on to Michigan and settled in Eaton County. A county history written while Hosea was still living called it "almost an unbroken wilderness." The forest was so dense and so large that his father "had to mark a trail to reach and leave his home." Timothy Carter bought 160 acres, cleared them, and lived on the land until shortly before his death near Eaton Rapids. He voted Whig and then Republican, and he gave the new party "staunch allegiance" for the rest of his life.

Hosea grew up on that Eaton County farm and went to the district schools nearby. In the census of 1850 he was ten, living at Eaton Rapids, a few miles north of the Calhoun County line. That was the age at which, in the history's words, "responsible farm life began for him," and he farmed for the rest of his life.

On 13 November 1870, at Clarence in Calhoun County, he married Narsena J. Starks, who had been born in Clarence Township. He was 31 and she was 22. Her father, Thomas Starks, was a New York man who had settled on a homestead in Clarence Township and worked there as a cooper as well as a farmer. Hosea and Narsena farmed in Clarence Township for the rest of their lives. They had six children, and two died young: Dee in 1874 and Benjamin, called Bennie, in 1883. Reba, Bert, Rhea and Adrian grew up.

Hosea's first land was an eighty acre tract. He added to it until he held 160 acres, the same size as the farm his father had cut out of the Eaton County woods. He did general farming and raised stock, especially Shropshire sheep and Shorthorn cattle. Like his father he was a Republican, and he belonged to the Free and Accepted Masons at the Springport lodge. In 1893 he went to the circuit court of Calhoun County as the complainant in a suit against John Smith and Ellen Smith.

In the census of 1900 Hosea was 60 and farming, married thirty years, with Narsena, four of the children, and Narsena's widowed mother Phebe Starks, 78, under his roof. In 1913 the county history named him "one of the oldest citizens of Clarence township" in both age and years of residence. It added that few people were left who knew "by experience" the way of life of those early days. Of his ten brothers and sisters only one was still living then, Silas N. Carter, a farmer in Eaton County. In 1920, at 80, Hosea was still in Clarence with Narsena and the sons Bert and Adrian.

Hosea B. G. Carter died on 11 November 1924, eight days after his eighty-fifth birthday. He is buried in Clarence Center Cemetery under a red granite stone carved with ivy that he shares with Narsena: "Hosea B. G. Carter, 1840 - 1924. Narsena J. Carter, 1848 - 1929."

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Cite: Heirology, "Hosea B. G. Carter (1839-1924)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/hosea-b-g-carter-1839-1924-0aac98.