The seventh of eight children of Thomas Nelson and Elizabeth Green, Martha was born in Fauquier County on Nov. 3, 1818.

She married William Walden Carter in 1838. their oldest surviving child George H. was born in 1839. Children Elizabeth (also known as Lucy or Betty), Alice, and Thomas were born in the subsequent decade.

The family lived in the Ashbys census district in 1850, farming on her father’s property. Her husband owned no land of his own at that time, but he did enslave nine people, ranging in age from 60 to 1 year old.

The 1850s would be a pivotal decade for Martha Carter. Her husband became a landowner, her youngest two children were born, and her father passed away. In 1851, her husband purchased 210 acres of land from her father for $5089.52 and his son William Walden was born, followed four years later by his youngest surviving son, James Robert. His father Thomas Nelson died in 1856. In 1859, her husband W.W. Carter expanded his landowning, acquiring land from his neighbor, the widow Georgiana Blight.

So it is not surprising that the family was considerably wealthier in 1860 than it had been in 1850. The 1860 census listed the value of her husband’s land as $9040 and recorded that he enslaved fifteen people. His personal property was recorded to be $30,278, although the census taker noted that this was “mostly as Trustee.” (His father-in-law’s will appointed him to be trustee for the children of his deceased sister-in-law Matilda Johnson.)

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, her husband, at 46 years old, was above the age required to serve in the Confederate military. Instead, he served as captain of the Home Guard. Their sons George and Tom both fought for the Confederacy, with Tom serving in the 43rd Virginia Battalion, also known as “Mosby’s Rangers,” and George riding in the 4th Virginia Cavalry, in Company H, which was known as the Black Horse Troop.

Her son Tom and daughter Elizabeth left their family home shortly after the Civil War. Elizabeth married Samuel Melville Withers, who during the war had served in the same unit as her brother George. Tom moved in with his sister and her new husband. 

Three of her children (George (now 31), Alice (now 26), William (now 19), and James (now 15) still lived with Martha and William Walden Carter at the time of the 1870 census. George’s first wife Mary and his two-year-old daughter Anne also lived in the home. 

Four black individuals lived with the Carter family at that time. It is possible that the adults, Alice Brown, age 22, and Lewis Brown, age 20, had been enslaved by the family prior of 1863 and had chosen to stay on after emancipation. The younger two black household members were Gen Granison, age 13, and Eddy Brown, age 3.

Martha Carter died in 1873.