He was sometimes nicknamed "Blaze" for his red face or reckless behavior, or "Nanzatico" or "Ludlow" for plantation houses he erected but was later forced to sell.
[2] This firstborn Charles Carter was baptized on November 15, 1732 at Christ Church in Lancaster County, Virginia.
Nonetheless, when his father died two years later, this Charles Carter successfully contested that will and caused the Virginia General Assembly to break the entail on several properties, which he then sold, as well as borrowed money from his wife's brother in law Speaker John Robinson to buy "Nanzatico", a 2,200 acre plantation also in King George County, on which be built a spacious new house, only to (according to tradition) tear it down and erect another.
He sold Nanzitico to his cousin, Charles Hill Carter, and moved his family to Ludlow, a plantation he owned in Staiford County and built a house there.
Carter did not stand for election for the last convention, as he was occupied running the important Chiswell lead mines in western Virginia.
[7] Carter favored adoption of the federal constitution, but did not win election to the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788; instead local voters elected George Mason, whose family had long held property and represented Stafford County, but who lived in Fairfax County and was a leading (tho unsuccessful) opponent of ratification.
[1] After selling his last plantation, Ludlow, in 1788 to satisfy creditors' demands, Carter lived in Fredericksburg, and his wife advertised for boarders from a nearby academy.
In the 1790s, this Charles Carter corresponded several times with President George Washington, appealing for assistance for his sons, one of whom he had bound as an apprentice to a Philadelphia coachmaker and two others to planters.