Robert W. Carter

Robert Wormeley Carter II (January 1, 1792 – October 27, 1861) was a Virginia planter who served multiple terms in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. In his early and last terms, he represented his native Richmond County in the Virginia House of Delegates (as had his grandfather of the same name), then for eight years represented the counties of the Northern Neck of Virginia in the Virginia Senate (roughly the successor of the Governor's Council on which his great-great grandfather, King Carter served for many years a century earlier). Early life Born into the First Families of Virginia on New Year's day in 1792 at his father's family seat, Sabine Hall. He was named to honor his grandfather Robert Wormeley Carter (who would die five years later) and great-great-grandfather Robert Carter I. His mother was Catherine Griffin Tayloe (1761-1798) the daughter of John Tayloe II who bore four daughters before dying when Robert was still a boy. Only two of those sisters reached adulthood, Lucy Carter (wife of William Travers and later Thomas Beale Hamilton) and Anne Catherine Carter (wife of Williamson Ball Tomlin). His father remarried in 1800, to Mary Burwell Armistead, daughter of John Armistead and Lucy Baylor, with whom he would have four more children, John Armistead Carter (husband of Richardetta DeButts and later a State legislator for Loudoun County), Frances Addison Carter (wife of Major Henry Rozier Dulany of Alexandria), Mary Landon Carter (wife of William A. Eliason) and Landon Carter who would die at the age of 23. Robert W. Carter married his cousin Elizabeth Merry Tayloe, the daughter of John Tayloe III a planter and state senator. Before her death in 1832, she bore a daughter, Elizabeth Landon Carter, who married Dr. Armistead Wellford. Their son Robert Carter Wellford (1853-1919) would inherit Sabine Hall and continued the family's tradition of legislative service at the close of the 19th century.