The Carters of Woolwich, Maine

The Carters of Woolwich, Maine is the story of a family of seafarers who hail from a small town on the coast of Maine. Spanning seven generations, the book documents how the Carters managed their home and business affairs during their long absences at sea. The narrative is drawn from letters and documents possessed by the author and family matriarch, Avis Carter Gebert, and her late cousin Margaret Carter Schopmeyer. Avis’ great-grandfather Captain E. L. Carter and his brother Captain Christopher Otis Carter, exchanged correspondence while at sea. They also wrote to their homebound wives and children from ports of call around the globe. The Carter brothers were first class blue water skippers engaged in the San Francisco trade. Their many circuits of Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope also took them to distant Asian and European ports. Sometimes their wives went to sea with them, and the birth of a child was a common occurrence aboard the Down Easters they sailed.

Throughout the family history, Avis Carter Gebert lets the Carter family letters “speak for themselves” as she gracefully weaves her tales of the times that her family endured, celebrated, and lived to the fullest at sea and at home. The Carters of Woolwich, Maine is illustrated, and includes chapter endnotes, family trees, and a useful index, including the Woolwich family names Trott, Stinson, Webb, Otis, Reed, Paine, Edgecombe, Day, Fullerton, and Delano, among others. The saga of the Carters covers just about every peril of those turbulent times when the young nation was expanding its merchant fleet and establishing itself as a world trading power. Carter captains were attacked by Caribbean pirates and harassed by the blockade restrictions of the Napoleonic Wars. They were “cast away” on foreign shores; or found themselves abandoning their burning ships. One was arrested for harboring a runaway slave, while others heroically rescued the crew of a distressed ship, or saved a man overboard in perilous seas.

Back home, death due to childhood diseases or fatal accidents in the families was also frequent. Often news of such loss did not reach the seagoing family members for months, until they learned of it in a foreign port. From Woolwich, the brothers’ retired father, Captain Charles William Carter, shared the news about the family and the town, reporting on business conditions, family concerns, and the arrivals and departures of the ships from Bath of other seafaring neighbors. Typical of small town life in the eighteen hundreds, marriage to the “girl next door” was customary. The bride was sometimes a cousin and usually the daughter of a sea captain.

The letters Christopher and E. L. Carter wrote to their children gave sage and loving advice on the importance of good character. They also guided their interests towards cultural pursuits. When they wrote each other as fellow fathers to express their sentiments over the death of a child, their words were eloquent and loving. Their letters also document how, as successful businessmen the brothers assumed the responsibility of providing for their beloved stepmother Adeline and their five half-sisters.

Descendants of Woolwich families, students of American maritime history, memoir lovers, and genealogists, will enjoy reading this book.

Avis Carter Gebert was born Avis Adella Carter in 1930 in East Corinth, Maine, the daughter of Mason Collyer Carter and Doris Adella Tate. She moved with her family at the age of two into the house that her great-grandfather Captain Edward Lothrop Carter had owned in Day's Ferry, Woolwich, Maine on the east bank of the Kennebec River. She attended a one-room schoolhouse for her primary education and graduated in 1948 from Morse High School in Bath, Maine. She graduated from Boston University in 1951 with a Bachelors degree in Education.

In Boston she met her husband Greg Gebert, whom she married in the living room of her Woolwich home in 1952. She is a retired elementary school teacher in Woodstock, NY, where she lives with her husband. She is a member of the Woolwich Historical Society, and is a storyteller at the Woodstock library.

She and Greg have shared interests in genealogy and travel, and have visited many countries in their pursuit, most notably their trip around the Horn in 2001 to revisit the last passage of Captain E.L. Carter in the Parthia.

Avis is a child of Maine, where tradition is strong. When the family letters and records were passed to her by her aunt Esther Groves some thirty years ago, she organized and transcribed them. The result is The Carters of Woolwich, Maine, a work of love and community, and the story of a maritime family.