Samuel Carr

Samuel Carr (1771-1855) was an American politician, soldier, and planter who served in the Maryland House of Delegates, the Virginia House of Delegates, and the Virginia Senate. However, he is today best known for being named in the Jefferson-Hemings controversy as he, alongside his brother Peter, was at one time rumored to have fathered children by Sally Hemings.

Early life and education Carr was born on October 9, 1771, at Spring Forest, a plantation in Goochland County, Virginia, the middle son of Virginia politician, planter, and lawyer Dabney Carr and Martha Jefferson Carr. Martha was the sister of Thomas Jefferson, and therefore Samuel Carr was Jefferson's nephew. His father died when Carr was less than two years old. For a time his mother attempted to continue raising her 3 young sons and 3 daughters at Spring Forest, but by 1781 the family had moved to Monticello, Jefferson's main plantation. Jefferson also helped to secure the promised inheritance of a nearby plantation in Albemarle County, Dunlora, which had been promised to Samuel by his namesake uncle (Samuel Carr 1746-1777) at his birth, shortly before Capt. Carr (who served in the 9th Virginia Regiment as lieutenant before commanding the marines aboard the brigantine 'Northampton') died fighting for the new country. Dunlora plantation had been patented by his great-great grandfather Thomas Carr in 1730, possibly when he was representing King William County in the House of Burgesses, the predecessor of the Virginia General Assembly in which this man served (also part-time).

Personal and plantation life After reaching legal age and securing Dunlora, Carr moved back to Virginia to with his wife and his mother. He farmed using enslaved labor, as had his father and many other relatives, some sharing the same name. In 1800, Overton Carr (either his father-in-law or brother-in-law) owned 8 slaves in Prince George's County, Maryland, and Samuel Carr seven slaves. In the 1810 census this man owned 33 slaves in Albemarle County, Virginia while his younger brother Dabney owned five enslaved people. In the 1840 census, Samuel owned 29 enslaved people in the same county.

Carr would have four children with his first wife Ellen Boucher Carr, before a prolonged illness ended her life in July, 1815, leaving Samuel a widower. Carr would outlive their daughter Martha (1808-1816) and their sons John Carr (1801-1839, who became a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy) and H. Dabney Overton Carr (1806-1841, a West Point graduate killed in Mexico), so only James Lawrence Carr (1813-1875) who moved to Kanawha County in 1830 survived his father. Carr eventually moved closer to his eldest son in Kanawha County in the western reaches of Virginia, which after his death and during the American Civil War separated to form West Virginia. He later served in both the Virginia House of Delegates (1818-1819) and the Virginia Senate (1835-1839). Carr also a justice of the peace in Albemarle County, Virginia. While the overseer did not name the white man repeatedly visiting the enslaved women, the Randolphs named this man as fathering the last children born to Sally's sister, Betty Hemings Brown, Robert and Mary, circa 1800. These claims are still given credence by some scholars, even though DNA tests in 1998 ruled that neither of the Carr brothers could have fathered one of Sally Hemings's children, Eston. Dunlora survived the American Civil War and the Great Depression, but was razed in modern times.