Part Two

Joel's Childhood and Marriage

Joel Carter was born during the middle years of the reign of George III. The king was highly neurotic but with a flair for music, furniture and gardens. The king valued ‘family life’, and was keenly interested in the agricultural improvements which took place during his reign. The creation of model farms on his estate at Windsor earned him the nickname ‘Farmer George’.

Besides Joel’s birth, 1793 also heralded the start of the long French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815.)  Along the south coast of Devon there was a real fear of a possible French invasion.  Besides great statesmen like Pitt and Fox and great captains like Wellington and Nelson, the era was also graced by some of the greatest names in English literature: Cowper, Byron, Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Shelley and Keats. Artists like Reynolds and Gainsborough founded a school of English painters. There were also great engineers and inventors, such as Isaac Watts, James Brindley and Thomas Telford.  It was the dawn of the canal age later to be followed by the railways.   

In 1812, when Joel was about nine years old, his grandfather John Vincent of Yarcombe died, aged 85 years. In John’s will he remembered many of his children and grandchildren, for example he left his daughter Anna, wife of Elias Carter, £47-10-00, to be paid to her within one year and an equal sum to be paid the following year.  John Vincent also left money to his grand daughter Rachel.

Joel Carter would most probably have had a settled and secure childhood. In relation to other families, the Carter’s were quite comfortably well off.

At Harpford, Joel’s father, Elias Carter was churchwarden and sometimes he also served as parish overseer.  In parish documents frequent referral is made to the Carter family, and on several occasions Elias Carter was one of the gentlemen who regularly signed parish accounts.  Looking in closer detail, Elias Carter was paid by the overseers for firewood for the Poor House, and on another occasion for reed for the Poor House.  In another document mention is made of Elias Carter jnr, the churchwarden’s son, being paid 10 shillings a year to play the church organ. The following year he received £1.

Extract from Harpford parish accounts

Besides her role as a wife and mother, Mrs. Anna Carter had affairs beyond the home.  From the Rolle Family Estate papers, Mrs. Anna Carter along with Abraham Smith and Nathaniel Carter (1780-1833, no known relation) jointly held the lease on the silk factory in the neighbouring village of Newton Poppleford.

Life at Harpford in Joel Carter's childhood, like that invoked in "Far From The Madding Crowd" was still paced by the procession of the seasons, the generations and the agricultural and religious calendars.   Its markers were haymaking and harvest, the first cuckoo, the longest day, the last swallow, Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, births, marriages and deaths.   The old rural England of ballads, folk dances, the organic community, the aural tradition had vitality and integrity and above all continuity.

In 1814, Joel’s older brother, Thomas Carter married Sarah Hare Paver. Elias and Anna Carter provided well for their eldest son, setting him up on a farmstead at Bowd, Harpford.

Joel Carter aged 22 years was married by banns at Harpford church on 9th October 1815. The wedding was taken by Rev. Marwood Tucker who was vicar at Harpford from 1811 to 1845.  Joel married 19 year old Mary Paver, sister of Sarah Hare Paver.  The two girls had been baptized at Harpford.  Their father Roger Paver had farmed at Harts, a property at one time owned by Roger’s father, James Paver of Otterton.  Roger Paver signed Harpford parish accounts in 1791, 1794, 1798 and 1805, but he died in 1810.  Both Joel and Mary neatly signed the marriage register and were likely to have been able to read and write.

From his wedding day, Joel Carter probably farmed at Harts.  Maybe he lived there with both his wife and mother-in-law.  Harts was located just north of Harpford church, on low-lying land, between the River Otter and the lane to Tipton St John and Ottery St Mary.

Harts has long since been demolished and there is now a modern bungalow on the site.

Entry in Harpford Marriage Register for 9th October 1815

This is one of a series of related articles. Click forward or back to jump to the next.

Researched by Anne Speight, © 2009

SOURCE MATERIAL

Rural Life In Victorian England.  G E Mingay
‘Harpford’  Revd. H.R. Evans. The Devonshire Association for the Advancement
 of Science, Literature and Art. Vol 101 (1969) pg 45-81.
‘Harpford Parochial Health Service 1730 – 1830’. Revd. H. R Evans.
Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 29, 7 (963) pg 201-205.
Parish Registers of Harpford, Yarcombe, and Otterton
Harpford Land Tax Assessments 1780 - 1790.
Rolle Family Estate papers
1839 Harpford Tithe Map and Schedule
Will of John Vincent of Yarcombe 1807.
Harpford Overseer and Churchwarden Account Books

44 NP-B-00002  biography, Newton Poppleford any