CARTER, SAMUEL FAIN (1857–1928). Samuel Fain Carter, lumberman and businessman, son of John Quincy Adams and Mildred Ann (Richards) Carter, was born near Huntsville, Alabama, on September 14, 1857. In 1858 the family moved to Sherman, Texas, where in 1870 Samuel began work on the Sherman Courier as printer's devil, compositor, and typesetter. From 1876 to 1881 he worked on the Galveston News. He married Carrie E. Banks of Galveston on June 23, 1882. Carter entered the lumber business in 1881 as bookkeeper for the Texas Train and Lumber Company in Beaumont; he became so familiar with the industry that he was soon managing the sawmill plant at Village Mills. Subsequently, he returned to Beaumont, where he was made manager of the business and bought a stock interest in 1883. He moved in 1892 to Houston, where he and M. T. Jones organized the Emporia Lumber Company, which Carter managed until the sale of his lumber interests in 1906. In 1907 he organized the Lumberman's National Bank (later the Second National Bank) of Houston, of which he was president until January 1, 1927, when he became chairman of the board. He was president of the Houston Building Company and director of the American Maid Flour Mills, the First Texas Joint Stock Land Bank, and the Houston and Texas Central Railway. Carter died in Houston on March 1, 1928, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hugh Nugent Fitzgerald, ed., Texans and Their State: A Newspaper Reference Work (2 vols., Houston: Texas Biographical Association, 1918). Houston Post-Dispatch, March 2, 1928. Clarence R. Wharton, ed., Texas under Many Flags (5 vols., Chicago: American Historical Society, 1930).
