Thomas James Carter was born in Marsh Baldon in 1833, the son of Fanny (Frances) Carter, a ‘single woman’ (1810 – 1887). Although he left the Baldons as a child, he frequently returned to visit his grandmother, Elizabeth. Based on his own observations and his grandmother’s recollections he has left a remarkable legacy of information about life in the Baldons in the mid-19th century.
Although a ‘working man’, a labourer including on the railways and in the Oxford brickworks, he had an eye for antiquities of all sorts. Presumably he left school at a relatively early age, yet he wrote many notes and letters, and his handwriting was neat and (mostly) grammatically correct, although he did use upper case letters in a rather erratic fashion! He became a self-taught expert in fields as diverse as palaeontology, archaeology and folklore. The revival of Morris dancing locally, after its fall in popularity in the late 19th century, was largely down to the efforts of Thomas Carter. He was also knowledgeable about the natural world – when referring to what is commonly known as goose-grass or cleavers, he would also use the scientific name Galium aparine.
Because of his curious mind and his wealth of knowledge, Carter became an indispensable informal assistant and friend to the Oxford archaeologist and historian Percy Manning, known as “the man who collected Oxfordshire”. Carter provided Manning with many specimens and stories, which Manning meticulously documented and archived. Carter’s contributions have now found their way into the Ashmolean Museum, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford Natural History Museum and The Bodleian Library.
Carter in1892, aged about 59, at the excavation of the Roman site at Alchester, near Bicester
Carter’s story has been extensively researched and documented by Michael Heaney, who has kindly permitted us to draw from his paper, published in Oxoniensia, Vol 83, 2018, “Thomas James Carter’s Role in the Collection of Oxfordshire Antiquities, Fossils and Folklore”. The pages on this website on aspects of life in the mid-1800s are based largely on Heaney’s research - you can find them here.
Carter lived most of his adult life in St Clements, Oxford, with his wife Eliza. They had four children. By the 1901 census he was describing himself as a “geologist”. He died in 1909, aged 76. Whilst Manning has a blue plaque in his honour on his former house in Summertown, Oxford, Carter is buried in an unmarked grave in Rose Hill Municipal Cemetery, Oxford.