John A. Carter (Virginia politician)

After private education locally, he attended boarding school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, then began studies at the University of Virginia but was expelled after a rules violation.

[2] He married orphan Richardetta Louisa De Butts (whose guardian was local leader John P. Dulany) in Loudoun County on February 12, 1834.

Initially, Carter farmed near the border between Fauquier and Loudoun counties, but eventually moved to his late father-in-law's Virginia estate, which he probably named "Crednal" after his grandmother's Hertfordshire village, after his wife's mother died in 1845.

[8] Loudoun County voters twice elected Carter to two terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, once before and once after the American Civil War discussed below.

[10] Despite his Tidewater ancestry, he spoke in favor of universal white manhood suffrage and for allowing western Virginia counties a majority in the House of Delegates.

[16] Nearly a decade after the American Civil War, Loudoun County voters returned Carter to the Virginia House of Delegates.