Thomas Butler Carter Papers, 1831-1898

Gift, Margaret Carter Bannerman, 1978.

The Thomas Butler Carter Papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room (Priority III).

The Thomas Butler Carter Papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Thomas Butler Carter Papers, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Virginia Hay Smith, 2008.

Chicago businessman.

Thomas Butler Carter was born in Union Hill, New Jersey in 1817, where he spent his boyhood. He began clerking at age 15 and continued at various stores until 1838, when his employer invited him to become a partner in a Chicago dry goods business. After many business and real estate setbacks, Carter ultimately became an agent for the Chicago Equitable Life Assurance Society.

In 1840, Carter married Catharine Raymond, sister of Benjamin Wright Raymond, third mayor of Chicago. They had ten children, five of whom died in infancy. After Catharine’s death, he married Margaret Garthwaite of Newark, New Jersey.

Thomas Butler Carter died in 1898.

Correspondence of Thomas Butler Carter of Chicago to his cousin Aaron Carter in New Jersey from 1831 to 1898, plus a few other letters. Also, an autobiographical account of Carter’s life until 1889, covering his early life, his difficult journey from New York to Chicago, and the fifty years after his arrival in Chicago in 1838. Both the correspondence and the autobiography yield interesting descriptions of Chicago social and family life, business affairs, real estate transactions, religious life, local politics, and Carter’s work as a purchasing agent for the Chicago Relief and Aid Society after the 1871 fire. Also, several family and business documents and two advertising cards, plus two cabinet photographs, one of Thomas Butler Carter and one of his nephew George Lansing Raymond, and four cartes de visite of Carter and his wife Catharine Raymond Carter.

Materials arranged by type.

• Names
  • Carter, Thomas Butler, b. 1817
  • Chicago Relief and Aid Society.
  • Raymond, George Lansing, 1839-1929
• Subject
  • Chicago
  • Dry-goods -- Illinois -- Chicago -- History -- 19th century
  • Family Papers
  • Family –- Illinois –- Chicago
  • Great Fire, Chicago, Ill., 1871
  • Manuscripts, American
  • Migration, Internal -- Illinois -- Chicago -- History -- 19th century