Jeanne Caroline Smith Carr (1825–1903) was a prolific American newspaper correspondent and an educator who served as Deputy California State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

An expert in botany and horticulture,[1] Carr is chiefly remembered as a mentor of John Muir, with whom she had a public and platonic, yet warm and intimate relationship, their correspondence spanning 30 years.

[2] At her home, "Carmelita", in Pasadena, California, Helen Hunt Jackson is said to have written many pages of her masterpiece, Ramona.

[6] Personal tragedy struck the Carrs during this time period (one son died in a railroad accident,[7] and another of a gunshot — some said murder, others said suicide[8][9]), and Ezra's health declined.

As a result, he retired from active life, and in 1880, they moved into the newly formed Indiana Colony, the forerunner of Pasadena, California.

[4] Here, they laid out their beautiful property, a tract of 42 acres (17 ha), located on the northeast corner of Colorado Street and Orange Grove Avenue.

In the course of years, it became noted for several things; first, its great variety of fruit and ornamental trees and plants-more than 200 in all-which Jeanne had obtained from nearly every part of the world; for the hospitality extended by its hosts to many eminent people, drawn to "Carmelita" by the personalities of the owners; and as well because of its beauty and interest.

In a log cabin on these grounds, it is said that Helen Hunt Jackson, while visiting the Carrs, wrote part of Ramona.

[12] Her articles appeared in California Horticulturist, California Teacher, Home Journal, Illustrated Press, Los Angeles Daily Times, Pacific Rural Press, Pasadena and Valley Union, Western Farmer, Wisconsin Farmer, and Wisconsin State Journal.

[1] She was considered an authority on the plant life of California,[3] and had made a special study of horticulture, also of the possibilities of sericulture, which had been attracting some public attention at that time.

[16] Previously, in 1885, when a Citrus Fair was held in Pasadena, one of its objects being to raise funds to assist the public library enterprise, Carr contributed much toward its success.

One exhibitor was a young man named John Muir who in his spare time on the family farm in Marquette County whittled a series of very clever clocks and similar devices.

What the Carrs did to enhance Muir's career was broad and general, nurturing his contact with the elite classes of society in the late 19th-century United States.