Rev. Willis J. Carter

The Guilford Industrial Historic District featured rapids on the Little Patuxent River that attracted milling and geologic layers of high quality granite that brought quarry workers.  Investors in the granite quarries came in force once the B&O built the Patuxent Branch line going to Savage Mill in 1887.  The plan had always been to reach the Guilford quarries by rail, but that didn’t happen until 1902.  In preparation for the railroad, the Maryland Granite Company bought a good deal of land in Jones Fancy and some in Wincopin Neck for its operations including right-of-way for the B&O.  A lasting gift this company gave us was hiring a black quarry worker by the name of Willis J. Carter. 

Willis Carter was born in 1858 and raised by Albert Carter and Louisa Fleming Carter in Richmond, Virginia.  Albert was listed in the 1870 censes as a laborer and in the 1872 Freedman Bank records as shoemaker.  It was this latter record that indicated Albert was a freed slave as his 1899 obituary confirmed as follows:  

“Just before the war the family that his wife belonged to brought her and the children to Richmond and in order to be near her, Mr. Carter hired himself and came to this city also; and worked at his trade - that of a shoe maker- which he learned at night while a slave. He made shoes for the Confederate Government, thus escaping much of the outside hardships of life”.

Willis and his mother were was in the middle of his siblings in age, and his oldest brother, Albert Jr. was a quarryman in the 1880 census and Willis was listed as a shoemaker as was his father in 1872.  

Census forms are all but absent for 1890 due to a fire, but in the 1891 Richmond Directory Willis J. Carter was listed as a block cutter, a career he would continue and change the Guilford community forever.  As indicated in an 1895 Richmond Planet obituary for his brother Joshua, who died of a stroke at only 23 years old, Willis attended his funeral.  Willis must have been living in Granite, Maryland as a quarry worker and probably worked for the Guilford and Waltersville Granite Company which was the main employer in the area. Based on the article, it appears he had temporarily left his wife and family behind in Richmond to seek a better opportunity in Maryland. While he was gone, Mary was busy raising their children while she managed a farm in the upper part of Henrico County as well as a garden and small farm at her home. This was a small indication of the entrepreneurial skills of the Carter family.

Willis Carter sold his property in Henrico County, Virginia, in November 1897, and was located in Baltimore by then according to this newspaper listing and the birth of his youngest son in Baltimore County a year later.

Sadly, his older brother Albert Jr., died in an accident just two months after their father passed away.   In the 1900 census, Willis was living in Granite, Maryland working as a skilled driller in that quarry. Granite was renamed from Waltersville to recognize the importance of the valuable mineral to that community. 

Family notes and the First Baptist Church of Guilford list Willis as being the first pastor of the church family in 1900 which he ran out of his rented house. Willis, his brother James, and three others obtained 1 acre of land property in October 1903 from Henry A. Penny, Jr. to build a larger church building and three months later Mr. Penny sold Willis and Mary about 14 acres of land for their own home and farm which employed many in the community.

In addition to church teachings, Mary began a small school for the local children and Willis and his employer, the Maryland Granite Company, pushed for a public school starting in 1902.  In 1905, Willis and Mary’s efforts to have a school for the children of Guilford’s workers came true when the Board of Education finally built a public school for black children.  Among the first named trustees of this new school was Willis Carter.  There were Carter family members associated with supporting the public schools for the next 70 years.

Reverend Willis J. Carter died in 1906 at just 49 years old from abdominal cancer. Quarry workers and stone cutters were occupations associated with this disease (Cocco et al. 1996). After his death, Mary continued the farm and was viewed as the mother of the church due to her dedication to the church, her family, and the Guilford community.  

Willis’ oldest son Richard, who worked on the family farm but also as a quarry-worker. But Richard was also an entrepreneur whose businesses included a grocery store, an auto-repair shop, and a gas station. His wife, Dora Mack Carter, helped with these business and ran the grocery store for several decades. She also taught music at the church and ran the Sunday school for over 50 years. The store still stands today on Oakland Mills Road across from Guilford High School and is up for sale and will be demolished in favor of expensive homes.

Willis’ second oldest son, Samuel, helped his mother run the farm and his son, Roger, opened an auto-repair shop in Ellicott City. Roger also filled a critical need for the black community in Guilford before school integration by opening a bus company that operated for over 40 years.

The patriarch of the Carter family, and of modern Guilford, was clearly Reverend Willis J. Carter. His legacy continues.

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