Carter occcupation

[Peter Stenning]

I have a 15 year old relative living away from his parents and listed as a Carter .
Carter appears to be a cart driver as he is on with a farmer, what would he have been employd to do .?

Move crops i would assume , but 15 does seem young , also he is listed as a servant .

Any thoughts please .?

Peter

[Uncle John]

I think he'd be doing more or less anything to do with horses. Perhaps not ploughing as that's a skilled occupation.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Farm workers who "lived in" were always recorded as servants, or farm servants in the earlier census returns.
By 1891/1901 they were usually given a more specific job description (beastman, yardman, wagonner etc) and were recorded as "boarders."

Carter was just a generic term for those working with horses - in some parts of the country they were recorded as a teamster or wagonner.

Jay

[Helen Henderson]

My Grandfather was last in a long line of carters in his family and I understand he had quite a varying list of things to do. His main responsibility was to look after, and feed the horses, see to their equipment such as the bridles and reins, as well as making sure the carts were kept in good shape. He was also responsible for making sure the horses were kept shod by the local blacksmith.

Depending on the time of year he could be taking produce to market, delivering feed to farm animals, collecting supplies for the farm from the nearest town, and generally acting as the farm transport for both servants and family.

I understand from my older sisters that Grandma's house was full of horse brasses that used to adorn the tack of the horses on high days and holidays. Aparently in village fairs there used to be prizes for the best turned out horse and carts. It was a hard life with long hours especially at harvest, but when Granddad was forced to give it up after WW1 and move to town he was never very happy.

[Peter Stenning]

Thank you all for those comments which helps to give me an insight to my relative .


A general horse/cart person seems to be the most likely for a 15 YO .

I cant see any of todays 15 yo's doing that sort of work and for the equivalent rate of pay neither .


Pete

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Half your pay would be deducted for bed and board.

The other half you got at year end

jay

[Olde Crone Holden]

My 2 x GGF came from an endless line of farmers and farmed himself for many years.

For reasons unknown to me, the whole family upped sticks and moved into Manchester in the 1860s, where he promptly got a job with the railways as a Carter!

I thought this was an odd career move, but someone pointed out that as a former farmer, he would be skilled at handling horses, and the railways would have used Carters to shift produce around the town.

OC

[Jean and Tonic]

Yes I have a few 'Carters' ..... I think mine moved anything on a horse and cart including furniture ... the same as today you would have van driver.
Jean

[Penelope]

My 2 x GGF came from an endless line of farmers and farmed himself for many years.

For reasons unknown to me, the whole family upped sticks and moved into Manchester in the 1860s, where he promptly got a job with the railways as a Carter!

I thought this was an odd career move, but someone pointed out that as a former farmer, he would be skilled at handling horses, and the railways would have used Carters to shift produce around the town.

OC

OC, I read in a book about the villages here (Vale of York) that these village railway stations down in the Vale employed porters, etc from the slightly more distant Yorkshire Wolds as they were notoriously 'strong in the arm', moreso than our local ag labs. Wolds labourers were seen as good hard workers and the railway preferred to employ them!

Mum's family were dairy farmers who were lucky enough to own the nearest farm to where they built the village train station, and they'd have delivered churns of milk daily to the station which they sold 30 miles away in Leeds. So dairy farmers would have built up business connections in fairly distant cities - I have read most of the milk from round here went straight to Leeds. Over the Pennines, I'd imagine it was the same for Manc!

My great great grandparents on t'other side were also dairy farmers but my grt grandad (before setting up a dairy business) was also down as a 'carrier'; not quite a carter but similar set of skills, I'd guess? It seemed they did some fairly long distance hauls, crossing the Pennines, carrying as a sideline to farming. So maybe it was a fairly commonplace career move?

Peter - I'd imagine it was not a great stretch for a 15 yr old then to be a carter. It would be like the farmer's sons I have known driving tractors aged 13 - you'd pick up the skills young. And a carter would not need the same skills as say, a mailcoach driver - who'd be going at much greater speeds, with finer horses and more of them, sometimes charging through narrow gaps on very crowded city streets (I'd imagine they'd need a lot of skill and experience!) Maybe your ancestor was a bit of a horse whisperer!

As for his job, he might just be carting stuff around the farm (how many acres was it Often says on Censuses). Or if a dairy farm, taking churns to the station (and bringing em back), which would be a daily chore; or pulling loads. My mum (born on a dairy farm in the 1920s) remembered being taken to school each day by one of the farm boys in a gig (it was only a couple of fields' lengths away but presumably that was part of someone's job!) A lot of early farm machinery still used horses, to haul it into position, too. We lived in a house which had originally been my grandad's and there was a gig house. It was a derelict ruin by my childhood but my cousin who is 15 years or so older than me, recalls seeing it still full of old carts and mouldering horse brasses and tack, etc as late as the 1950s. And my friend, a farmer's daughter, once found a whole load of mouldering horse's tack in a deserted little hay loft on her dad's farm. Her grandmother said it had been there ever since she could remember. That stuff would have taken a lot of cleaning, fixing and maintenance as saddles and tack etc were always expensive commondities.

[BrianT]

Hello, having just done some digging into "Carters", the job not the name, I'd add the following:

They were the haulage contractors of the nation and up to the mid 19th century horses and carts transported most goods. With the coming of the canals a horse pulling a barge could move 10 times what he could on a cart so many 'carters' moved to the canals.
The arrival of the railways created some small local work but the bigger factories had their own sidings so the dynamic changed.

My 2p

[Peter Stenning]

Yes it was a big farm as far as i can see 200 acres on the census employing 4 labourers, a Baliff, and Thomas the Carter .
Street name which i presume is the farm is Washenden, run by Thomas Homewood and Family.


Peter