Editing Carter County, Missouri (section)

===Creation===
When the Missouri legislature created Carter County on March 10, 1859, it named the county after Zimri A. Carter.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RfAuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA271 | title=How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named | publisher=The State Historical Society of Missouri | author=Eaton, David Wolfe | year=1916 | pages=271}}</ref>

Zimri A. Carter (1794–1872) was born in South Carolina. In 1807, at the age of 13, he came to Missouri with his parents. The Carter family initially settled in what is now [[Warren County, Missouri|Warren County]]. Shortly after his arrival in Missouri Carter joined up with a party of traders traveling the [[Missouri River|Missouri]] and [[Mississippi River|Mississippi]] rivers in [[Flatboat|flat boats]], and was away for a number of years. In his absence his father Benjamin Carter traded a horse and a cow for a large tract of land in what was then [[Wayne County, Missouri|Wayne County]], about eight miles southeast of where the town of Van Buren would eventually be established. When Carter returned from his trading ventures he joined his father in farming their new [[Homestead principle|homestead]]. (Various sources give dates as early as 1812 and as late as 1820 for Zimri Carter's arrival in the area.) Carter became one of the most influential and respected men in southeast Missouri and was instrumental in bringing about the creation of Carter County and served for a time as county judge of Carter County. The Carters were soon followed by other families: the Chilton, Kenard, Snider and Kelly families, who, along with the Carters opened up large tracts of wilderness land.<ref name="google.com">Robert Sidney Douglas [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=HISTORY+OF+SOUTH+EAST+MISSOURI "History of Southeast Missouri, Vol 1, pg. 317. (1912)"]</ref><ref>[http://genealogytrails.com/mo/carter/bios_c.htm "Carter County, Missouri Genealogy Trails"]</ref><ref>[http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/ozar/hrs3.htm "Ozark Historic Resource Study, Chapter 3, Early Settlement Rural Community on the Ozark Frontier, 1815–1850"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131102114447/http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/ozar/hrs3.htm |date=November 2, 2013 }}</ref><ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, “A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition” pg 3, 6. (2007)</ref>

Carter County was created from portions of [[Ripley County, Missouri|Ripley]], [[Shannon County, Missouri|Shannon]] and [[Wayne County, Missouri|Wayne]] counties. On the first Monday of April 1859, three men (Adam Lane of Ripley County, John Bulford of Reynolds County and D.C. Reed of Shannon County) met at the home of James Brown to select a seat for the newly created Carter County. They selected [[Van Buren, Missouri|Van Buren]] which, until 1847, had been the [[county seat]] of Ripley County. At the time of its creation, Carter County was attached to Ripley County for the purpose of representation in the [[Missouri General Assembly|General Assembly]].<ref name="ReferenceA">Eunice Pennington, The History of Carter County, 1959</ref><ref>Arthur Paul Moser, [http://thelibrary.org/lochist/moser/carterco.html “A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets, Past and Present, of Carter County, Missouri”] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110705065106/http://thelibrary.org/lochist/moser/carterco.html |date=July 5, 2011 }}</ref> The old log-cabin courthouse, which had been erected in Van Buren in 1853, continued to be used as the Carter County Courthouse until it was replaced by a wood-frame building in 1867.

William Lawson was the first person elected to the Missouri legislature from Carter County in 1864 and served until 1870, at which time he was succeeded by F.M. Coleman.<ref name="google.com"/>

Initially Carter County had only one [[Electoral precinct|voting precinct]], and all voting was done at the county courthouse in Van Buren. In June 1868 the court ordered that Carter County be divided into two precincts, with Precinct #1 consisting of the western half of the county where voting was done in the courthouse, and Precinct #2 in the eastern half with voting taking place at the home of John Carnahan on the head of the middle fork of Brushy Creek. By 1895, at the height of the timber boom, Carter County had as many as ten precincts.<ref>Dr. Gene Oakley, “A History of Carter County, Sesquicentennial Edition” pg 6. (2007)</ref>

The [[1860 United States census|1860 U.S. Census]] showed the newly created Carter County with a population of 1,197 free persons and 20 slaves held by eight slave owners.<ref>http://www.censusfinder.com/missouri4.htm|{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} 1860 US Census</ref><ref>http://missouri-history.itgo.com/slave.html| {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111122203551/http://missouri-history.itgo.com/slave.html |date=November 22, 2011 }} Missouri History: Geographical Distribution of Slavery</ref> The [[1920 United States census|1920 U.S. Census]] showed a peak population for Carter County of 7,482. The population then declined until it reached a low of 3,878 in the [[1970 United States census|1970 U.S. Census.]]<ref>http://www.ofrpc.org/documents/CARTERCOUNTYFINISHED.pdf|{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Carter County Missouri, Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan</ref> The population has since risen steadily. As of the [[2010 United States census|2010 U.S. Census]], the county's population was 6,265.<ref>http://2010.census.gov/2010census/| {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100320084325/http://2010.census.gov/2010census/ |date=March 20, 2010 }} 2010 U S Census</ref>