Our Cousin, Jimmy Carter

If you wonder why Jimmy Carter thinks he can do anything and why he has a smug look of knowing everything. It is because he does know more than the average Joe. He is Patsy's cousin and that should explain the rest of his character. I would say he may not be recorded in history as the best of the Presidents--but he will be remembered for his beliefs and will be called a good, Godly man.

In the 1740s two little boys lived near Washington D. C., but there was no Washington D. C. then. I suppose they tended the tobacco plants of their father. I suppose they slept in the same bed at night. Their names were Charles and John Powell. Charles was our Grandfather and John his brother was our many greats Uncle. John married Margaret McDaniel while the family still lived near Washington D. C. The passed down tale is that Margaret was lured to a ship in the harbor near a town in Ireland, perhaps Dublin. The ship forced her into the hull and hauled her to America to be auctioned off as a indentured servant. When she ship landed in the harbor of Stafford County, VA another past indentured servant (Duke Whalebone) stood at the sale of servants and took pity on Margaret. He purchased her and took her to their little home where she grew up and married John Powell. Don't know if the story is true but 100s of years later different lines of the John Powell family knew the same tale with some variations. They had her name as McDonald where the records show her last name as McDaniel.

The John Powell family moved to Caswell County, NC before the Revolutionary War. They had a houseful of children including a daughter named Judith. Judith married William Seals Muse. His mother may have been unmarried when he was born or perhaps they were abandoned by Mr. Seals or maybe he died. William lived with his Grandparents most of the time and used the last name of Muse. Sophia was his mother's name. After America took the lands of Georgia from the Cherokee. I guess you could say stole it. William and Judith moved to Georgia where Sophia already had gone with his step-father. After a short time in Georgia, William used only the last name of Seals. William and Judith had a son named Spencer.

Spencer Seals married Elizabeth Burnley and they had a son William Archibald Seals. William A. Seals married Eliza Harris and they had a daughter named Mary Ann Diligent Seals. She married Littleberry Carter. I copied the rest of this from a site about James Earl Carter, our cousin.

Littleberry Walker Carter (1832-1874)

In 1851 Littleberry Walker Carter married Mary Ann Diligent Seals (c.1838-c. 1874) in Warren County, Georgia. She was the daughter of William A. (b. 1814) and Eliza Harris (b. 1815) Seals of Warren County. In the mid 1850s the Carters and Seals lived in that part of Warren County that became Glascock in 1857 and it was there that William A. Seals died in 1860, and his widow in 1886.

Littleberry and Mary Ann moved c. 1860 to Sumter Co. near his father's plantation. He served in the American Civil War in Captain Cutts Sumter County Flying Artillery, serving in Virginia. Littleberry was a farmer and was buried on his farm at the time of his death at the age of 42.

Littleberry and Mary Ann had four children:

• Jeremiah Calvin (1855-1925)
• Eliza Ann (b. 1856)
• William Archibald (1858-1903)
• Nannie Bell (b. 1866)

William A. Carter (1858-1903)

William A. Carter married Nina Pratt (1863-1939) in 1885. She was the daughter of James E. and Sophronia Cowan Pratt of Abbeville District, South Carolina. William and Nina were living in Arlington, 50 miles SW of Plains, where they had moved in the mid 1880's, when he died at the age of 45. Nina then moved to Plains, where she lived out her life and was buried.

William and Nina had five children:

• Ethel (b. 1887)
• William Alton (b. 1888)
• Lula (b. 1891)
• James Earl (1894-1953)
• Jeanette (1904-1984)

James Earl Carter (1894-1953)

James Earl Carter married Lillian Gordy in 1923. He was an insurance broker, farmer, fertilizer dealer, Baptist and Democrat. A veteran of World War I, he served on the County Board of Education and was a state representative in his first term when he died at the age of 59. The couple had four children:

• James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (b. October 1, 1924)
• Gloria (Mrs. Walter G. Spann)(b. October 22, 1926, d. March 5, 1990)
• Ruth (Mrs. Robert T. Stapleton)(b. August 7, 1929, d. September 26, 1983)
• William Alton "Billy" (b. March 29, 1937, d. September 25, 1988)

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (b. 1924)

Jimmy Carter married Eleanor Rosalynn Smith (b. August 18, 1927) on July 7, 1946.