Carter Park At 7000 Santa Fe Dr.

[Highrise Tower]

One of the City of Houston Park is called Carter Park and located at 7000 Santa Fe Drive.

Named after the infamous Houston family the Carters.

[Specwriter]

Highrise, I assume you are referring W. T. Carter the lumberman who developed Garden Villas where this park is located. Again, assuming you are not referring to the country western singing and songwriting family or the family of the former president (Billy was a bit of a character I'll admit 😀), why is the Carter family considered infamous?

Here is a link to the history of Garden Villas. I owned a house there in the 1990s on Sims Drive. https://www.gardenvillas.org/history-of-garden-villas.html 

Here is a link to the Texas Transportation Archive article on William Thomas Carter, Jr. https://ttarchive.com/library/Biographies/Carter-William-T-Jr_1926_New-Encyclopedia-of-Texas.html

Somewhere in my files I have a photocopy of the original Mexican land grant given to Stephen F. Austin wherein he conveyed 3200 acres, which included present day Garden Villas to Henry Prentiss in 1833.

[Ross]

10 minutes ago, Specwriter said:

Highrise, I assume you are referring W. T. Carter the lumberman who developed Garden Villas where this park is located. Again, assuming you are not referring to the country western singing and songwriting family or the family of the former president (Billy was a bit of a character I'll admit 😀), why is the Carter family considered infamous?

Here is a link to the history of Garden Villas. I owned a house there in the 1990s on Sims Drive. https://www.gardenvillas.org/history-of-garden-villas.html 

Here is a link to the Texas Transportation Archive article on William Thomas Carter, Jr. https://ttarchive.com/library/Biographies/Carter-William-T-Jr_1926_New-Encyclopedia-of-Texas.html

Somewhere in my files I have a photocopy of the original Mexican land grant given to Stephen F. Austin wherein he conveyed 3200 acres, which included present day Garden Villas to Henry Prentiss in 1833.

Images of land grants are available from the General Land Office website at https://s3.glo.texas.gov/glo/history/archives/land-grants/index.cfm

The GLO site says that the Prentiss grant was 4428.4 acres, which implies Prentiss was granted a full league of 25 million square varas. English field notes for the grant https://cdn.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/webfiles/efns/1-152.pdf

Image of the grant, in Spanish from 1833 https://cdn.glo.texas.gov/ncu/SCANDOCS/archives_webfiles/arcmaps/webfiles/landgrants/PDFs/1/0/2/8/1028887.pdf

Railroad Commission map of the grant(The RRC GIS site is the best tool I've found for seeing the outlines of land grants) https://gis.rrc.texas.gov/gisviewer/ There may be some conflict with other grants, but that happened a lot. The last vacant pieces of land created by errors in surveys were not identified until the middle of the 20th Century https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/land-vacancy I've seen a correction to a land grant to one of my ancestors in Jackson county that had a 300 acre conflict with an earlier grant. That was identified in the 1940's, long after my ancestors had sold the land.

[Specwriter]

Ross, thank you for posting. This is very interesting.

[mkultra25]

5 hours ago, Specwriter said:

Again, assuming you are not referring to the country western singing and songwriting family or the family of the former president (Billy was a bit of a character I'll admit 😀), why is the Carter family considered infamous?

Well, there is a third option... ;-)