I am pleased to report that my electronic edition, "The Diary,
Correspondence, and Papers of Robert 'King' Carter of Virginia, 1701-1732,"
(http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/berkeley/) is essentially finished. I
have some cleanup and checking to do but that work probably won't be visible
to users of the site. 

Scholar's Lab at the University of Virginia Library (successor to the
Electronic Text Center) hosts the site, and has a pretty good search
capability in place after some teething problems when new software was
installed around the first of this year. A search pulls up the section of
text in which the searched word appears. One can also pull up the
bibliographic header. Unfortunately the "Full Text" link does not work, but
one can find that by going to the "Read and Search The Transcribed Texts"
screen where all the documents in the database are listed chronologically.

It has been said of Carter (in his obituaries and in many places since his
death) that he owned 1,000 slaves when he died on August 4, 1732. My
spreadsheet total of his slaves as enumerated in the extensive inventory of
his estate shows 745 slaves held on nearly sixty quarters in eight Virginia
counties. I have created an alphabetical list (available on the website) of
those slaves that shows their family members, farm or quarter where held,
county, and work skill if given.

I commend the sections of Carter's inventory that list the goods in his
Brick House Store to those interested in everyday life in the colony. I was
startled, for instance, at the variety of fabrics held by the store, and had
to mine many sources to identify some of them. My particular thanks go to
Liinda Baumgarten, curator of textiles and costumes at Colonial
Williamsburg, for her generous and patient assistance with my many inquiries.

I also commend the inventory's lists of the many books--some 300--that
Carter owned, predominantly legal and theological, but including some
history and other topics.. Whenever possible, I have included in footnotes
the full title of each book to expand the brief entry in the inventory. It
has not always been easy to determine some titles even with online access to
the English Short Title Catalogue and the many national library catalogues.

If you should find an error in the material on the site, please let me know
about it. Making changes and corrections is now very easy for me to do with
the new software.

Ned Berkeley

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