In May 1853, J. E. B. Stuart wrote from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, to his cousin Bettie Hairston, “A few days ago I had a visit from an old friend and neighbor Jonathon Carter, now a Lieutenant in the Navy on the eve of starting out in Ringgold’s expedition to Bering’s Straights to be absent four years. He looked better than I ever saw him and seemed to anticipate a fine time.”
Jonathan Hanby Carter was born on January 1, 1821, in Surry County, North Carolina, the son of William Carter II and Elizabeth Moore. His family roots were in Patrick and Surry counties. Susannah Hanby married William Carter, the man O. E. Pilson, the “Father of Patrick County History” called the “Father of Patrick County” in 1788.
Carter chose the Navy as a career beginning in March 1840. He traveled the world for fifteen years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant in the United States Navy, serving on the USS Powhatan, USS John Adams, USS Perry, USS St Lawrence, and USS Savannah. Carter was in the first graduating class at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1846.
Mathew C. Perry led several expeditions to the Far East to open up China and Japan. Part of these expeditions included Cadwalader Ringgold (1802-1867), who led an expedition of five ships beginning in 1853 to survey the western Pacific for the whaling industry. Carter served on the USS Powhatan during the expedition.
On April 25, 1861, Jonathan Hanby Carter resigned his commission in the United States Navy and began his second naval career in the Confederate States Navy. His first command involved taking the Ed Howard, a side-wheel steamship, and turning it into the CSS General Polk. The six-gun ship patrolled the Mississippi River and Louisiana coast in the first two years of the war. After fighting in the Battle of Island #10 on the Mississippi River in March 1862, Carter escaped seventy-five miles up the Yazoo River and burned the ship to avoid its capture.
By October, he was building another ship. In April 1863, Carter launched the CSS Missouri on the Red River near Shreveport, Louisiana. He supervised all aspects of its construction and commanded through the end of the war. The ironclad ship carried three guns: one eleven inch, one nine inch gun, and one thirty-two pounder. A Union officer described the ship as “very formidable” but “very slow.” Carter’s command included 24 officers and 18 men, but it was not very exciting, mainly due to low water in the Red River keeping the ship from participating in any major campaigns.
Carter became so bored that in February 1864, he wrote, “Feeling desirous of doing my country more effective service, I must respectfully request that Steamer Harriet Lane now lying in Galveston harbor be turned over to me for the purpose of running her to some European port and there altering her as to make an efficient cruiser.” During the war, he wrote over 262 letters edited by Katherine B. Jeter in A Man and His Boat: The Civil War Letters of Jonathan H. Carter.
Jonathan Hanby Carter surrendered on May 26, 1865. The CSS Missouri was the last Confederate ship to surrender in home waters. After the war, Carter farmed in Louisiana, married Henrietta Tompkins in 1870, and settled near Edgefield, South Carolina, where he died in March 1884. In Edgefield’s First Baptist Church Cemetery, Carter lies near South Carolina’s Civil War Governor Frances Pickens and cavalry general Mathew C. Butler, who saved J. E. B. Stuart at Brandy Station in June 1863. Carter’s grave is in sight of Senator Strom Thurmond.
Bringing this story full circle, another local resident is starting her career at the U. S. Naval Academy this fall. Eliza Clifton is the daughter of Mitch and Julie Holland Clifton, the granddaughter of Garland and Becky Smith Holland, and the great-granddaughter of Maybelle and Fred Smith. Fred strongly supported the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace in the early days. If he was still with us, I think he would say of his great-granddaughter following Carter to Annapolis, “Gee Whiz Pal Fellows.”
