Born to Samuel and Ella (Oliphant) Carter in Austin, Texas, William Samuel Carter (1859-1923) grew up herding cattle in Jollyville before attending the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A & M University). In 1879, he became a fireman for the Central Market Railway (later the Beaumont Division of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway), and the next year, he married Mary Evelyn Gorsuch, with whom he had three children. After her death in 1892, Carter married Julia I. Cross in 1902, and the couple bore three daughters. Initiated into the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Alamo Lodge #263 in San Antonio in 1887, Carter served as the national magazine editor and manager (1895-1903), grand secretary and treasurer (1904-1908), president (1909-1922), and manager of the research department (1922-1923). From 1918 to 1920, he was also the only director of the U. S. Railroad Administration’s Division of Labor.
Sources:
Carter, William Samuel. Handbook of Texas Online . Accessed May 10, 2011. http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fca74 .
Brother Carter Called by Death. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine 74 (1923), p. 155-159.
From the guide to the Carter, William Samuel, papers 1940., 1935, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)
