Weld Carter

Wyn Achenbaum

[2009]

Weld Carter discovered Henry George in about 1939, in a course taught by Archie Matteson, in NYC or possibly northern NJ. Archie and his wife Jessie, who would part amicably sometime during the 40's, both remained friends of my grandparents, Weld and Marjorie. (Jessie moved to Chicago and became a part of the Tideman/Monroe circle. Archie loaned my father money to get through college in the late 40's and early 50's. In the 50's, Weld and Marjorie left their tobacco farm in Lancaster County, PA, and spent a few years in Chicago.

I believe Weld worked for John Monroe at HGSSS. Then he and Marjorie went on the road, first by car, then with a large travel trailer, visiting academics all over the country, introducing the idea of George and encouraging them in any interest they might have in the subject. RSF paid for this, and my sense is that it was perhaps 3 or 4 years. In 1962, they returned to the farm, reclaimed it and remodeled it after disastrous tenants had destroyed it. The following February, Marjorie was diagnosed with a fairly fast moving cancer, and died in July.

The following February, Weld married their old friend Jessie, and moved to Chicago, where she had, until 1960 or so, worked at HGSSS. After a couple of years in the city, they moved to Antioch, on the IL/WI border, midway between Chicago and Milwaukee, where Art Becker and Mase Gaffney were. Weld was the behind-the-scenes fellow on TRED.

Weld was very much a Georgist, occasionally addressed as Dr. Carter, but he never finished his undergrad work at Princeton, due to his mother pulling the (meager!) purse strings during his senior year.

I will pull together the tables of contents of the TRED books sometime in the next few months. I am in the process of developing my own website, and will include that information, but I think it would be wonderful to be able to include most or all of those conference participants and the titles of their papers in your biographical listing.