Martha Carter

CREATED 19 Sep 2026 as the MOTHER of [348] Cornelia Carter, on Owen's ruling of that date. Graded DIRECT: the 1900 census STATES the relationship. ⛔ Her maiden name is NOT entered as a fact - see below. Registers K504, K727, K739, K733, K734. THE RECORD THAT STATES THE RELATIONSHIP (register K504, read on the image). 1900 U.S. Census, Justice Precinct 1, Travis County, Texas, ED 0108, sheet 8, dwelling 127 family 134. Line 21: 'Carter, Martha', relation to head 'MOTHER IN LAW', white female, born OCT 1820, aged 80, widowed, 6 children born and 3 living, born GEORGIA, father Georgia, mother Georgia. The head is John Morgan and his wife on line 16 is Cynthia C., born Apr 1856 - that is [348]. A mother-in-law of the head, in a household whose wife is [348], is [348]'s mother. That is a record STATING the relationship rather than one correlating columns. AND A SECOND RECORD STATES HER OTHER CHILD (register K739, read on the image). The 1880 U.S. census of Travis County, ED 121, sheet 10D gives 'Martha Carter', 60, born Georgia, relationship MOTHER, in the household of J. M. Carter, 38, born Georgia - the Joseph M. Carter of the July 1867 Travis County voter register. ★ TAKEN TOGETHER, ONE WOMAN IS THE STATED MOTHER OF BOTH the son born about 1842 and the daughter born about 1852-53. 60 in 1880 gives a birth year about 1820 and agrees with the 1900 entry. ⛔ WHY THE SURNAME HERE IS CARTER AND NOT YATES, AND THE MAIDEN NAME IS IN THIS NOTE ONLY. [348]'s 1937 Texas death certificate, field 15, gives her mother's maiden name as YATES (register K727; Ancestry and FamilySearch both index Yates, and the image alone is ambiguous between a looped capital Y and a capital G). A Fayette County, Georgia marriage of Syrus H. Carter and Martha Yates on 13 Apr 1835 was predicted from that surname and then found - but the project holds only a TEXT-ONLY ABSTRACT of it, no image, so the identification of that bride with this woman is an inference and not a read record. Yates therefore stays in prose until the original return is read. ⚖️ THE CONFLICT THAT IS RECORDED RATHER THAN SMOOTHED. The wife enumerated beside Cyrus H. Carter in the 1860 census of Sebastian County, Arkansas is 'Martha', aged 31 - a birth year about 1829 (register K734, and re-calibrated in K742 against a known 4 and two known 3s on the same page: the digit is a 3). A woman born about 1829 CANNOT be the mother of Joseph M. Carter, born about 1842; she would have been thirteen. So EITHER that age is an enumerator's error for this woman, OR the 1860 wife is a second wife who is not the mother of the older children. ⛔ This is NOT resolved. The 1850 census gives the wife as Martha, 36, born Georgia - a birth year about 1814, which is 6 years from the 1880 and 1900 figure and is the ordinary looseness of census ages; the 1860 '31' is the outlier. The mother link above rests on the 1880 and 1900 STATEMENTS, not on the 1860 household, and is unaffected either way. ⛔ NO DEATH EVENT IS ENTERED, AND THERE IS NO DEATH RECORD TO FIND IN TRAVIS COUNTY (register K743). She was living in Oct 1900, aged 79 or 80. Searched 19 Sep 2026 in two independent indexes - Ancestry's Texas death certificates 1903-1982 and FamilySearch, which also reaches Texas Deaths from 1890, Find a Grave, BillionGraves and the cemetery abstracts - each with a must-hit control that fired at rank 1. A blank-given-name sweep of every Carter born 1810-1830 is COMPLETE at 28 of 28 and holds ZERO Travis County Marthas. ☞ And register K744: the Texas form in use 1903-1909 is a REPORT OF DEATH carrying no father, no mother, no maiden name and no spouse, so even a hit could not have settled Yates unless she died in 1910 or later. She most probably died between Oct 1900 and 1903. Audited 19 Sep 2026.