George Lafayette Carter (10 January 1857–30 December 1936), industrialist, was born in Carroll County and was the son of Walter Crockett Carter and Lucy Ann Jennings Carter. As a youth Carter helped his father on the family farm and attended a country school during the winter. At age sixteen he secured employment as a clerk in a Hillsville store. Sometime after 1880 Carter became a buyer for the Wythe Lead and Zinc Mine Company, in Wythe County, and later rose to manager and bookkeeper. During the 1880s the railroad contractor George T. Mills hired him as vice president and general manager of the Dora Iron Furnace that Mills was building in Pulaski. After Mills died, Carter became president of the company and completed construction of the ironworks. On 9 April 1895, in Carroll County, Carter married Mayetta Wilkinson, daughter and sister of business associates. Their only child was a son born the following year.

Building on his investments, Carter persuaded two charcoal iron producers to merge their extensive properties with the Dora Iron Furnace. He purchased several small mines in Wise County and constructed about 700 coke ovens, which he organized as Tom's Creek Coal and Coke Company. Carter acquired the Crozier Furnace, in Roanoke, and in October 1897 incorporated all these properties as the Carter Coal and Iron Company, which he later sold at a handsome profit.

In 1899 Carter established the Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke Company with himself as president and director. The business, capitalized at $10 million, consolidated the leading iron, coal, and coke properties in southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee. It controlled sixteen modern blast furnaces that had a production capacity of 900,000 tons of pig iron per year, 150,000 acres of coal lands including five active coal mines, and 60,000 acres of iron ore lands and mines. Originally the company maintained its principal office in Pulaski, but by early in 1901 Carter had moved its headquarters to Bristol. The discovery of rich iron ore deposits outside the region intensified competition, and after the company defaulted on loan payments in 1901, the courts placed it in receivership. When it was sold, Carter recouped several hundred thousand dollars.

Undaunted by the failure of Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke, Carter pursued his goal of securing an outlet for the southwestern Virginia coalfields. In 1902 he established the Clinchfield Coal Company and began to amass hundreds of thousands of acres in the mineral-rich region and to acquire small railroads. One of these he renamed the South and Western Railway and extended its route. The greatest expansion took place between 1905 and 1908, and in March of the latter year Carter received a charter for the redesignated Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railway to link his vast coalfield holdings with the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley manufacturing region and the southern Piedmont textile mills. Slicing through the Appalachian Mountains, the railroad ran 211 miles from Dante, in Russell County, to Bostic, in Rutherford County, North Carolina, and included thirty-five tunnels, six major bridges, and an exceptionally low grade for easier transportation of heavy coal cars. One of the most ambitious rail undertakings in the East and reputed to be one of the most expensive railroads in America, it cost between $125,000 and $195,000 per mile and required backing from investors in several states, including the New York financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, a native Virginian. By 1915 the completed railroad extended almost 300 miles from Elkhorn City, in Pike County, Kentucky, through Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to its terminus at Spartanburg, South Carolina.

In 1903 Carter launched the Bristol Herald and four years later oversaw its merger with the Bristol Courier to form the Herald Courier. The establishment of the Herald was an unusual venture for a man who disliked publicity as much as Carter did. Indeed, to conceal his identity as owner he bankrolled three newspapermen as a cover and prohibited the editors from printing his name for any reason. He sold the newspaper in 1919.

About 1907 Carter moved his family and business offices to Johnson City, Tennessee, where he lived for approximately ten years. About 1913 Carter stepped down as president and sold his stock in the Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railway. He also divested himself of land in Kingsport, Tennessee, and banks and other businesses in Tennessee and Virginia. His new venture, the $10 million Carter Coal Company, became one of the largest coal producers in the country with land in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. By 1920 Carter had moved to Coalwood, a remote mining town he built in McDowell County, West Virginia, to focus on developing his coal-mining operations there. In 1922 he sold Carter Coal to Consolidation Coal Company for $12 million. The subsequent decline in the coal industry caused Consolidation to default on its payments, and in March 1933 control of Carter Coal and its holdings reverted to Carter. That same year Carter, then living in Washington, D.C., where Carter Coal was headquartered, went into semiretirement and became vice president. He installed his son, James Walter Carter, as company president.

In that capacity the younger Carter challenged the constitutionality of the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act of 1935 in the Supreme Court of the United States. Also known as the Guffey Coal Act, it allowed the federal government to regulate coal prices as well as wages, hours, and working conditions of miners throughout the country. In Carter v. Carter Coal Co. et al. (1936), the Court ruled in James Carter's favor.

Described by contemporaries as an empire builder, Carter attracted an estimated $100 million of new capital to eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. He owned hundreds of thousands of acres of land as well as banks, mills, and other business enterprises in southwestern Virginia and nearby areas of eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. His Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railway spurred the development of many industrial towns and cities along its route, most notably Kingsport and Johnson City, both in Tennessee. Among other contributions, Carter organized support and donated money and land for the establishment of East Tennessee State Normal School (later East Tennessee State University) in Johnson City. The Carter Coal Company Store in Coalwood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. George Lafayette Carter died of pneumonia on 30 December 1936 in a Washington, D.C., hospital. He was buried in a private cemetery in Hillsville.

Sources Consulted:
Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), 2:64–67 (portrait); biography in Bristol Herald Courier, 1 July 1956; O. K. Morgan, "George L. Carter, Empire Builder," in Luther F. Addington, ed., History of Wise County (Virginia) (1975), 222–227 (variant birth year of 1858); Willie Nelms, "George Lafayette Carter: Empire Builder," Virginia Cavalcade 30 (1980): 12–21 (portraits.); birth date in Carter family Bible records (1772–1888), Acc. 40308 (p. 6), Library of Virginia (LVA); Marriage Register, Carroll Co. (giving age on 9 Apr. 1895 as twenty-eight years, two months, and twenty-nine days and implying birth on 11 Jan. 1867), Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, LVA; State Corporation Commission Charter Book, Record Group 112, LVA; Carolina, Clinchfield, and Ohio Railway Records and Virginia Iron, Coal, and Coke Company Records, both East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tenn.; Moody's Manual of Corporation Securities (1901), 940–941; J. O. Lewis, "The Costliest Railroad in America," Scientific American Supplement, no. 1752, 31 July 1909; Manufacturers Record 63 (9 Jan. 1913): 61; Moody's Manual of Investments, American and Foreign, Industrial Securities (1934), 1116; Carter v. Carter Coal Co. et al. (1936), United States Reports, 298:238–341; obituaries in Bristol Herald Courier, New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Washington Post (portrait), all 31 Dec. 1936.

Photograph in Men of Mark, Vol. 2.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Vincent Brooks.

How to cite this page:
Vincent Brooks, "George Lafayette Carter (1857–1936)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Carter_George_Lafayette, accessed [today's date]).

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