This is the second of a series of articles derived from a diary, found in Angleton, Texas, detailing a previously-unknown set of relations to the Wold Newton Family. The first article, "You weren't nuthin' but a hound dog," explored some of the canines affected by the fall of the Wold Newton meteor. The articles' author is a respected scholar and raconteur who, for legal and safety reasons, I refer to as "MN."

Once upon a time there was a mighty hero from Virginia named “Carter.” His feats were renowned, and his name remains potent even today, several decades after his adventures were first published. He was exceptionally strong, even by the standards of the Wold Newton Family, and was a fighter widely respected (and feared) by those who knew him and knew of him. His adventures were numerous, and his enemies fantastic and vile.

He was not John Carter, Warlord of Mars and Prince of Helium. He was John Carter’s nephew, and for decades he was the more celebrated—rightfully so—of the pair.

The story of the Carter cousins, however, begins not in the 19th Century but far beyond that, a century and more, in Richmond, Virginia. An old and respected family there, the Trouts, had settled in Virginia in the 17th century, a James Trout helping Thomas Stegg establish a trading post at the then-unnamed site at the fall of the James River. Trout had taken a wife with him from England, and they settled in the area and raised several children. The Trout family prospered and became a very respectable Old Dominion family, several members being present in 1752 at the founding of Richmond.

In 1750 Ronald Trout, Jr., was born; he was the son of Ronald Trout and Mary Evans. In 1773 Ronald Jr. married Laurelyn Smith. The following year Ronald began his activities with the anti-British Virginia Convention. Laurelyn gave birth to two children: Whitney Smith Trout, born in 1781, and Joseph Trout, born in 1784.

The shorter and easier of the two Trout branches to describe begins with Joseph. Joseph's son, Henry (1809-1864), moved to Salem, Virginia, in 1830, to further the family business. Henry's grandson, Leo Trout (1858?-?), was the youngest of three and saw no way by which to make his fortune in Virginia, and so left Salem, striking out for California in 1878. While traveling along the National Road near the village of Waycross he was hurt in an accident. While recuperating in Waycross he met Eva Shawnessy, and decided to stay in Waycross. Eventually they married and gave the world that most underrated of all writers, Kilgore Trout.¹

The more complicated Trout branch begins with Whitney Smith Trout. Whitney, a saucy and spirited blonde with her mother's wit and beauty and her father's drive, was the hit of Richmond society after her 1799 cotillion, and her hand was much competed for. Trout refused to be courted by any of the young men of Richmond and Virginia society, instead allowing herself to be swept off her feet by Jack Carter, a young adventurer of unknown provenance.² They were married later that year, to general rejoicing and in 1800, when Whitney discovered she was pregnant, it was thought that a great family was in the making, one that would bring still more honor to the Trout name and would establish the Carters as powers in the state.

Whitney gave slow and agonizing birth to three children over the space of three days and then slipped into unconsciousness, dying without ever awakening or bidding farewell to her stunned and grief-stricken husband. It was later said that the energy and life she would have spread over a dozen children and twenty years she spent on a pair of children, with the third being “normal” but in truth an afterthought.

Again, I will begin with the simplest line first, although "simplest" is a relative term in this case. The youngest son of Jack Carter and Whitney Trout was Nate Carter (1800-1865), and the extraordinary abilities present in his brothers were entirely absent in him. Modern, psychology-conscious researchers might wonder if Nate felt any jealousy or insecurity towards his more noted brothers. If so, the only evidence of these feelings came later in his life, when his devotion to his wife Christina suffered for a moment. As an adult Nate took over management of the farms that had been his mother’s wedding present from her father and amassed a significant amount of wealth, making the Carters one of the richest families in America. His brothers were too busy adventuring to do something so prosaic as live the life of a gentleman farmer, so the job of maintaining the family fortune fell to Nate. (This may have been another source of resentment for Nate, but if so there is no recorded evidence of it) He built an enormous estate, "Carter Hall," on the outskirts of Richmond. Nate and Christina had a son, Benjamin, in 1832. In 1853, however, something happened to strain the marriage between Nate and Christina. Records are scarce on the subject, and Christina's diary (located by MN at the Carter Family Archives in Richmond, VA) has had several pages removed from it, but an 1859 entry contains these two passages: "that woman…has finally left Richmond" and "our previous difficulties have, praise the Lord, receded." Birth records show that a "Martha Carter" was born in Richmond, at a pauper's hospital, in 1854; no name is given for Martha's mother.

Benjamin (1832-1926) maintained the family fortune and farms, and married Emily Watson, the daughter of another old Richmond family, in 1856. Their twin sons, Jeremy (1857-1930) and Walter, (1857-1920?), were born the following year, and Nellie (1860-1916) and Warwick (1863-1922) followed soon thereafter. We will return to Ben’s children presently.

Martha Carter (1854-1936) must have endured a difficult childhood, being born out of wedlock to a single mother and being denied the comfort of her father's family and home. The sufferings she undoubtedly went through, both as an infant and then as a child during and after the Civil War, must have been considerable. However, no record exists of Martha Carter, with the exception of the birth record, from between her birth and her marriage to Chris Carter in 1876, and so we can only conjecture about her personality and upbringing. The circumstances behind this marriage would undoubtedly make for interesting reading; however, no account was ever given of how Chris and Martha met.

Chris Carter was a child of the Carters of Arkham, Massachusetts. The Carters of Arkham trace their heritage back to the Norman Conquest. A Carter fought in the First Crusade, being captured by the Saracens somewhere near the Tell `Asur and learning strange secrets from them. Another Carter, Sir Randolph, is reported to have studied magic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Yet another, Edmund Carter, was charged with being a witch by the authorities in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, but escaped hanging through means still unknown. He emigrated to the tangled woods and dark hills around Arkham and built the sprawling family hall where succeeding generations lived.

Edmund's great-grandson, Jonathan (1790-1846), fathered two children, Christopher (1814-1891) and Edmund (1816-1904). Christopher was drawn to certain obscure and arcane fields of studies and grew grey and old early in life. His brother Edmund married (MN has so far been unable to discover the name of Edmund's wife) and fathered two sons: George (1850-1882) and Chris--the same Chris who married Martha Carter.

We can only imagine the household that Chris and Martha made for each other: he, from a proper and ancient lineage, stuffy in the way that only Yankee bluebloods can be but also haunted in the way that only a Yankee from Arkham (or Innsmouth) can be; and she, whose blood as haughty as his but whose personal history was far more desperate. Made worse for both of them was their living quarters, which were the Carter family estate in Arkham. How Martha, a child of the South, must have reacted on first seeing the many portraits of the Carter family staring gloomily down at her and on first enduring the bone-chilling winters of Arkham (so much colder, curiously, than those of the rest of Massachusetts) can only be imagined.

Martha and Chris married in 1876. George Carter died in 1882 under strange circumstances. (The Carters of Arkham were not receptive to requests for information, especially about George and his son; MN has included several curt letters from the Carters denying him access to their family archives and threatening him with legal action if he attempts further investigations) George had married in 1873 (his wife's name is not known), and their son, born in 1874, was adopted by Martha and Chris.

This son was Randolph Carter, and his future life, from the strange event in 1883 which gave him predictive powers to his death in 1928, has been explored in depth by Howard Lovecraft.

The second son of Jack Carter and Whitney Trout was John Carter. John (1800-1898) led an interesting life, as his biographer, Edgar Burroughs, has shown. Unfortunately for Burroughs and for future researchers, much of Carter’s early life is obscured because of Carter's "amnesia." No clear reasons are given for his amnesia, whether in his ten-volume (auto)biography or in those documents MN was able to uncover. Mr. P.J. Farmer has speculated that Carter somehow acquired an elixir of immortality similar to Tarzan's. MN's researches show this not to be true. However, if Carter's extraordinary longevity (more on which following) was derived from this formula, it might also explain the brain damage that Carter exhibited later in life.³

Carter apparently left home at an early age. He may have simply lived the life of a rich young Southern gentleman, but his references to his "only means of livelihood, fighting," and his description of himself as a "soldier of fortune" lead MN to believe that Carter may have sold his swords and guns freelance starting at a young age, perhaps as early as 1821.⁴ When he realized that he was not aging beyond the age of 30 is not known, nor is there any record of the reaction of those outside the family to his remarkable vitality and youthfulness. Those within the family had the example of John's brother as well as their father, Jack,⁵ and so most likely found it normal.

When the Civil War began John enlisted in the Confederate cavalry and by war's end had earned himself a commission as a Captain. John's memories of the war, however, do not seem to have been fond ones,⁶ and for good reason. He'd had to suffer through the heartache of the family schism between his eldest brother and the rest of the Carter family at the beginning of the war. (More on this following) In April 1865 had come the horrible news that the Union forces had sacked Richmond, and during its fall Carter Hall had been taken and razed, Jack and Nate Carter dying on its doorstep, swords in hand. And, finally, John had suffered through the defeat of the Confederacy during the war, something his fighting man's pride must have found intolerable.

At war's end he was, in his own words, "masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood, fighting, gone." He chose to go prospecting in the American Southwest.⁷

What happened after that has been covered in volume one of Carter's (auto)biography, A Princess of Mars. Carter spent ten years fighting and then loving on Mars, returning to Earth in 1876. Once back he discovered that the gold strike he and his friend, Captain James K. Powell, had discovered had made him rich. More, the gold had helped restore the Carter family fortunes, and had led to Carter Hall being rebuilt by Ben Carter. We can only imagine the joy felt by Ben and John at their reunion, both undoubtedly having thought the other was dead. Ben most likely offered the use of Carter Hall to John, but John refused, for reasons of his own, and bought an estate on the Hudson River in New York state and settled down there. In 1886 he returned to Mars again, and his body was found in his house and interred in the Carter family mausoleum in Richmond. In 1898 he returned to Earth, summoned his nephew Walter to him, and gave Walter the manuscripts comprising volumes 2, 3, and 4 of his (auto)biography.⁸ Carter was then reinterred in the mausoleum and passed beyond the ken of his family.

The eldest son of Jack Carter and Whitney Trout was Simon Carter (1800-1886). Simon was born first and was therefore treated by Jack and Whitney as their oldest son. That he was born only a few hours before John (eager as ever for new experiences and adventures, John reportedly pushed his way out of the womb without any help from Whitney) was irrelevant; he was born first, and so was the oldest son.

Simon, nicknamed "Sim," was like his brother John in many ways. Sim had extraordinary vitality and longevity, appearing to be only thirty for over sixty years. Sim was very strong, very willful, and enjoyed adventures and fights as much as John. But Sim's moral compass was truer than John's.¹⁰ John spent the decades before the Civil War working as a mercenary. Simon spent those years working as a consulting detective, with various agencies and on his own.

Simon’s idyll–for such it was, Simon enjoying himself far more as a detective than he ever had in Carter Hall, surrounded by Southern luxury–came to an end in 1861 with the declaration of war between the Confederacy and the United States of America. Simon was faced with a choice many Americans of that time had to make: which side to fight for. That choice was an agonizing one for many in the border states, often tearing apart families.

This proved to be the case with the Carters of Richmond, but for Simon there was no choice. He had worked in New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC as a detective, and undoubtedly worked beside emancipated slaves and Freemen, learning that, contrary to what he had been taught as a child in Richmond, those of African descent were not subhuman, but were just like him, only with darker skin. Simon most likely learned that race hatred was wrong and evil, and there is some scant evidence that he had a hand in helping escaped slaves make their way to safety in the North. His feelings for his family, whose slave holdings were considerable and were the source of much of their wealth, must have been conflicted but ultimately condemning.

Simon chose to fight for the Union and returned to Carter Hall to inform his family of his decision. There are no surviving records of Simon’s announcement and the heated, furious argument that followed; most of the Carter diaries were destroyed in the fire which leveled Carter Hall. What was said will never be known for sure. But the end result was quickly known to all. Simon was disowned by Jack and told never to return to Carter Hall. The following day Nate and John gave orders to the servants and slaves of Carter Hall never to mention his name again and to remove all of his effects and possessions from Carter Hall and burn or bury them. Simon, from that point forward, was as one dead to the Carters.¹¹

Simon left Carter Hall in a cold fury, saying nothing to his relatives as he left but thanking the family servants for their long service. Simon’s movements after leaving Carter Hall and his activities during the war remain a secret. Repeated requests for his war records filed under the Freedom of Information Act have been denied on the grounds that the files remain “classified” for reasons of “National Security.”¹² An interesting account from the New Orleans Tribune mentions a strange “submarine-like craft” creating havoc with the ship’s attempting to break the Union blockade around the city. A Confederate spy on-board the Union ship New Boston was present when the submarine met up with the New Boston and the sub’s captain, “Craig McKenzie,” his first mate (who seemed to be an escaped slave), and another man boarded the New Boston. The third man did not introduce himself but the description matches that of Simon Carter.

At some point during the war Simon was active in England, perhaps attempting to stop ships from smuggling food and/or arms to the Confederacy. While there he met Winifred Ludlow, of the Worcestershire Ludlows. Winnie's own lineage is not without note. Although this was never widely known in Worcestershire, and was in fact hushed up, Eugenia Ludlow, the "maiden" aunt of Johnny Ludlow and Tod Ludlow (best known for Mrs. Henry Wood's friendship with them and chronicling of their adventures), was briefly involved with Jesse, the 4^th Duke Greystoke, during one of the (many) periods in which Greystoke's wife Arabella Howard was enceinte. Jesse was called to Worcestershire on business and was attracted to Eugenia. She, for her part, was too busy enjoying her youth and beauty to want to be tied down, and a quick affair with a handsome and well-connected nobleman. Their brief relationship led to Winifred, the inheritor of the Wold Newton genes.

How long Winnie and Sim knew each other, the circumstances under which they met, what drew them together—these facts, such as they are known, and the story of the brief, passionate, doomed romance between Winnie and Sim deserve a biography of their own, or perhaps a novel or opera. Suffice it to say that their time together was brief, but like Jack Carter and Whitney Trout before them they lived a lifetime within the space of two years.

Winnie and Sim returned to the U.S. in 1865, entering through New York City and registering with the officials there as “Simon and Mrs. Carter.” Winnie was already pregnant. Simon brought her to Washington, where he met briefly with certain government officials, and then returned with her to New York City. For the next four months he worked as the sole owner and operator of the “Carter Detective Agency” (motto: “We never sleep”). Then, later in the year, Winnie gave birth to a young boy who she and Sim had agreed would be named “Nicholas.” Winnie died a day later, probably from complications from the childbirth.

Simon’s friends seem to have agreed that it was following Winnie’s birth that Sim finally began showing his age. In the years preceding the war and during the war Simon had been uncannily energetic and young-seeming; like his brother John, he had been, to the eye, unchanged despite his years, looking closer to thirty than to his true age. But within a few weeks of Winnie’s death lines and crows-feet began to appear on Sim’s face, and his hair began showing streaks of grey. By the time Nicholas was a teenager Simon looked every day of his 70-plus years, and was called, by those who knew him, “Old Sim.”¹³

Nicholas never spoke much to his friends about his childhood—it was one of the few subjects on which he was reticent—and Simon’s friends seem not to have been privy to the particulars of Nicholas’ upbringing. Based on the available facts, however, it appears that Simon’s goal, in raising Nicholas, was to create a man who would be as great a man as possible and as great an American as possible. Perhaps this was a reaction on Simon’s part to his estrangement from his family: “I will make a man so awe-inspiring, so dedicated to the ideals of freedom, liberty—the ideals we fought for during the War--and so capable of fighting for Good that my brothers and father will know that they were wrong.” Perhaps Simon’s reaction came from a broken heart: “I will raise my son to be a perfect man, so that his mother’s memory is properly honored.” Or perhaps Simon, beginning to feel the weight of his years, decided to make a son who would carry on his own ideals and fight for them when he was gone. We shall never know the answer to this question, however.

What is known is that Sim devoted the next twenty-one years of his life to training his son, making the physical and mental development of Nicholas his primary occupation. (Sim continued to work as a consulting detective, but it was no longer foremost in his mind) In the words of one critic, Sim trained Nicholas "in every possible area of knowledge that might conceivably have to do with solving crime, including the sciences, various languages, art and physiology." Nicholas' body was similarly honed, until he could easily lift well over twelve-hundred pounds,¹⁴ run inexhaustibly, distort his face until it was unrecognizable even to Sim,¹⁵ and perfectly mimic voices, accents, and sounds.

The final result was a man who at the age of 21 was the first true Superman, anticipating Clark Savage Jr. by a generation.¹⁶ Few physical feats were beyond him, and all there was of detective science and its contributory fields of knowledge thundered through his head. Unlike his Uncle John, however, his moral education had not been stinted on by Simon, and he was keenly devoted to fighting for justice and the underdog, and for all races, not just the white man. Nicholas could have chosen any profession and excelled at it, but he decided to emulate his adored father¹⁷ and become a private investigator.

Nicholas’ childhood ended¹⁸ in his twenty-first year when, during his first case, Old Sim was murdered. Nicholas solved the crime and saw to it that his father’s killer was sent to jail, but the effect on Nicholas’ psyche must have been considerable, and far more traumatic than described in his (auto)biography.¹⁹

Nicholas, of course, went on to become Nick Carter, the single most successful detective in American history and one whose exploits are second in number only to Sexton Blake’s. Nick Carter’s story does not end there, however, and there is, sadly, still further reason for the label of “Tragedy” to be applied to the history of the Carters of Virginia.

Nick began working as a private detective in New York City, but his skill was such that quickly became very successful and famous not just in NYC but around the world, and within a few months was being consulted by and summoned to help wealthy businessmen, Presidents, Kings, and various foreign potentates. His name became a byword for diligence and discretion, and he was welcome everywhere. It was during this time, between 1886 and 1890, that he befriended Phileas Fogg, the famous explorer and adventurer; it is thought that they met at one of the van der Luyden’s parties. Fogg and Carter hit it off famously, and while they did not often see each other in the next decade, when they did encounter each other the conversation resumed as if the intervening weeks or months had not existed.²⁰

Nick also acquired, during this time, a set of helpers, very similar to Clark Savage Jr.'s; for more information on them, see Appendix A below. They and Phileas were Nick's first real friends, and we can only imagine at the need for companionship that they filled. But one thing was still absent from Nick's life: romantic love. This he found only a few short years after he began his detective work, in 1892. Unfortunately, as with so much else in his life, Nick was not destined to be happy for very long in his relationships with women.

The accounts, published in issue #68 of the Nick Carter Detective Library, speak of a wife, “Ethel,” who Nick marries. In the very next chapter of his (auto)biography there is an account of her murder at the hands of one of Nick’s many enemies. Only a few months later, an account speaks of Nick’s dead wife “Edith,” and for the chapters following that is her name. The casual researcher may be forgiven for wondering what took place. Had some typographical errors slipped into Nick’s (auto)biography? Had Nick somehow forgotten or changed the name of his wife? Had Nick’s biographer somehow made a mistake?

The truth is far sadder than any of those possibilities. Extensive research into the marriage records of the New York City Archives by MN as well as careful readings of the New York Times for 1892 have revealed that Nick Carter married twice in the space of three months in 1892, and that both wives were murdered by Nick’s archenemy, Dr. Quartz.

Nick’s first wife was Ethel Ackermann (1869-1892). She was the daughter of the notorious Western scofflaw and detective “Deadwood Dick” Ackermann. (Ackermann’s history will be explored in some depth in the article following this one. Also see footnote 25 below) More information than that, however, is hard to come by, in large part because of the primary source for information on Ethel and Nick’s marriage to her: the Nick Carter Detective Library.

As mentioned, some editing took place in the Library and in New York Weekly, at Nick’s behest. Some lines of dialogue were removed and/or rewritten for various reasons. Unfortunately, it seems that some elements of Nick’s personal history were also edited in a similar fashion. The exact dates of Nick’s relationship with Ethel, their marriage, and her death–these are unknown, and the Nick Carter Detective Library (NCDL) is not reliable for our purposes. MN’s search for Ethel’s death certificate in the New York City Archives did not turn up anything, and there are only two external (to the NCDL) references to her passing. The first is a two-line ad in the September 1st issue expressing sympathies to “N.C.” The second is found in an interview with Dr. John “Jack” Quartz in the Sing-Sing Beacon on July 30th, 1930. Quartz is, for the most part, incoherent and in need of heavy medication, but one statement draws the eye:

Interviewer: “What can you tell us about your clashes with Nick Carter?”
Quartz: (drools) “One wife for every conviction! One wife for every conviction!”

Nick’s second wife was Edith Blake (1867-1892). Blake was the daughter of a British factory owner who was traveling to New York City in the fall of 1891 with her friends when her ship, the Providence, was kidnaped by Ordway the Unaccountable Crook and his gang. Ordway, one of Carter’s recurring enemies, rounded up the crew of the Providence and its captain, Owen Kettle, and imprisoned them in the brig. Luckily for all involved, Carter was informed of Ordway’s whereabouts through his contacts in the underworld and tracked down the Providence. He arrived just as Kettle led the escape from the brig, and together the two captured Ordway and his men. Following that experience Edith and Nick kept in touch and became friends.²¹ It stands to reason that as Nick’s closest female friend Edith would have been the person Nick turned to for comfort in the lonely days and weeks following Ethel’s death. Many widows and widowers fall in love (or believe they do) with their comforters following the deaths of loved ones, and Nick, despite his great abilities, was only human. For her part, Edith likely had a crush on Nick from the first moment they met; he was brave, famous, gentlemanly, well-educated, articulate, and vulnerable, all things designed to appeal to a woman of her class. Their love affair seems to have been fairly quick, and their wedding the result of impulse, rather than a carefully planned act. There’s no record of this marriage; it was likely done in secret, perhaps in Niagara Falls or in Canada, as a second marriage so quickly after being widowed would cause no small amount of scandal, something Nick would undoubtedly have been aware of.

We can only imagine the devastation felt by Nick when Edith fell prey to Quartz a short time after their marriage. Nick never mentioned it to his adopted son, Chickering “Chick” Valentine, and the NCDL is silent on the subject. The impact, however, must have been considerable.²²

Nick’s life following the death of his wives is fairly well reported, although we must again advise against taking the comments credited to him in his (auto)biography as verbatim. Nick’s success and fame grew, and after a brief retirement (see Appendix A) returned to work and became still more successful.

Then, in 1907, Nick discovered, in the course of a case, a hidden city in the foothills of the Andes somewhere in southern Bolivia. The inhabitants were a previously-unknown race of mixed Indian and Norse descent. They were led by Queen Zaidee, who forced Nick to become a gladiator before he forced her into a swordfight with him. He defeated her, which by the rules of the city meant that he was to marry her. He was unnerved by this, and soon afterwards is approached by Zaidee’s younger sister Carma, who is aggressively and physically sexual with him. He barely escapes from being forced to have intercourse with her, but a version of the Stockholm Syndrome set in and he fell in love with her, and she with him. Carma helped Nick and his friends escape from the city, and on the steamer ride home from South America Nick announced to his friends that he and Carma were to be married. The following chapter of Nick Carter’s (auto)biography, published in issue #531 of New Nick Carter Weekly, contains no mention of Carma or of a “Mrs. Nick Carter,” nor does any following issue.

Needless to say, this is a strange story. However, if we take into account the editorial control exercised by Nick Carter over the chapters of his (auto)biography and the undoubted willingness of his editors to cooperate with him, all becomes clear. (The following conclusions have been extensively documented by MN after a number of trips to archives and various locations in Virginia and North Carolina)

Nick Carter and Carma were married on-board the steamer carrying them back to the United States, the marriage being performed by the steamer’s Captain. As soon as the steamer docked in New York City, Nick and Carma left, saying goodbye to a mystified Chick Carter and to his other friends. A month later Nick returned alone, and despite repeated questions from a very curious Chick Carter and Pat Murphy refused to say anything about where he had been. He apologized profusely, but flatly refused to discuss the subject. For the next three years Nick would regularly disappear for approximately one week every month, leaving and returning without a word. He consistently refused to say where he went to and would not take any cases which would interfere with his “vacations.”

Nick was visiting his wife and children. Again, we have no solid proof of what went through Nick’s mind, but it is easy enough to guess. He had lost two wives to horrible violence, and after fifteen long, lonely years and found someone else that he cared for.²³ He would certainly take every step to see that it did not happen again.

MN has reconstructed Nick’s movements from 1907 to 1910 and searched through the Deeds records in a number of counties in Virginia and North Carolina and discovered a five hundred square acre holding credited to a “Mr. Nicholas Trout” (note the use of his family name) in Moore County, North Carolina, along the Beaver and Cranes Creek northwest of Lobelia. MN visited this location and found the ruins of what had once upon a time been a well-appointed and very homey house. This was Nick’s and Carma’s home. Nick brought her to a remote location far away from civilization and had a house built for her, a home that would be large enough and comfortable enough and most of all safe enough for her to live in comfort. In this place she would be safe, and he could relax and not worry about his wife dying in the same way that his previous two wives had.

It was in this house that Carma gave birth to her two children, Simon (1908-?) and Richard (1909-?). Life seems to have been idyllic there, and Nick might well have been contemplating retirement, until the day came when he was informed of Dr. Quartz’s escape from prison, aided by his female assistant, “Zanoni the Female Wizard.” Did he have a premonition of doom, as he began tracking them and found that they had headed south from New York? Or was he unsuspecting until he reached the borders of Moore County? We will never know.

Nick found his house partially destroyed by fire and his wife dead, surrounded by the bodies of a number of Quartz’s gang members. According to the members of the Lobelia Fire Department, who arrived on the scene soon after Nick did, Nick was found cradling his wife’s body. When asked what happened, Nick said, in a heartbreaking monotone, that his wife was skilled with the sword and would not allow herself to be victimized in the way that Ethel and Edith had been. She fought and died, heaping her dead around her in the way that her Viking ancestors had. And she fought well enough and long enough to drive off Quartz and Zanoni (who were captured in Chapel Hill the following day by Nick²⁴) before they could discover Simon or Richard.

What happened was carefully concealed by Nick, who did not want Quartz or Zanoni to discover that they had not finished their job. Nick decided that he had to give up Simon and Richard. He could not raise them in New York City, not with any degree of safety; the news that Nick Carter had two small children, with no apparent mother, would not only bring scandal to Nick’s name (something he undoubtedly cared little about) but would also attract more unwelcome attention by Nick’s enemies.

So he gave the two children up for adoption. He would not turn them over to just anyone, however. Someone like Nick Carter would choose only the best families to trust the care of his two children to. The first family was the Calhouns, a Moore County family. The Calhouns were very poor, but were of exceptionally high moral caliber, and Nick had no doubts about turning his child over to them. Simon was raised by them as their own, and grew up never knowing who his biological father was. Nick, for his part, discretely sent money to the Calhouns and followed Simon’s progress via the Calhoun’s oldest son Jack. Jack (1891-1962) became a policeman and then entered the U.S. Rangers in the early 1920s; he was only too happy to tell Nick about his baby brother. Simon grew up thinking of himself as Calhoun and married a local girl. Their son, John (1927-?), became a figure of some note, his adventures being chronicled by Manly Wade Wellman.

Nick took a different path with Richard, perhaps figuring that a vengeful criminal would not think to look at both ends of the social spectrum to find Nick’s children. To that end he approached his old friend Phileas Fogg and asked for help, on the grounds that only Phileas would best know who was trustworthy enough to take care of Richard and who would be safe from attacks by Nick’s enemies.

Phileas’ choice was a surprising one. He chose his sister Isis. Isis had recently married the wealthy Wall Street broker Alvin H. Benson, but had so far been unable to conceive. Isis was desperate for a child, and Benson was quite wealthy; excellent conditions for the proper upbringing of a child. Isis was given Richard and told not to ask any questions. She did not, instead concentrating on raising Richard in the right way. Richard was too young, at the time of his adoption, to remember Nick and Carma in more than very vague terms, and quickly forgot about them, so well did Isis raise him. Richard’s life was not a placid one, however; it was marked with violence in much the same way that his biological father’s was.  His father, Alvin, was murdered in 1926, in a case which attracted a great deal of attention in New York City, not the least of which from the famous gentleman detective Philo Vance. In 1938 Richard’s wife Alicia and daughter Alice were killed in an “accident” meant to murder him. This tragedy led to the Richard taking on the role of the “Avenger,” the crime fighter whose exploits were chronicled by Kenneth Robeson.

Nick Carter had no more children, and the Carters alive today exhibit none of the extraordinary abilities of their ancestors. Considering what those men and women suffered, the current set of Carters might well consider that a good thing.

Next, in Part Three: "Reach For Yuh Genealogical Charts, Stranger!" An Extraordinary Family of the Wold West
 
 

Nick Carter was, like Clark Savage Jr., assisted by a number of individuals in his war on crime. They were, if anything, even more varied than Savage’s, and while not so world-renowned they were certainly capable of performing the tasks that Carter asked of them.

The first was Chickering “Chick” Valentine, a 14-year-old ranch hand in Nevada who Nick met early in his career. The pair were taken with each other, and Chick accompanied Nick back to New York City, where he became Nick’s boy assistant and eventually his adoptive son. He was Nick’s constant companion, and the only one to be with Nick from the very beginning of his career, in 1886, to the recorded end of his career in 1927.²⁵

Nick’s valet was Peter Brown, an aging retainer who had served Simon before helping Nick. After Peter died, in 1905, Joseph, his son, took over as Nick’s domestic assistant.

The individual who helped Nick on the most cases besides Chick Valentine was Patrick “Patsy” Murphy, an Irish bootblack from New York City who had originally been summoned to help Nick for one case only but was later retained by Nick on a permanent basis.

In 1897 or 1898 (the surviving records are unclear on the exact date) two new assistants arrived to help Nick: Nellie and Warwick Carter. These two were, as previously mentioned, the son and daughter of Ben Carter, Nick’s cousin. How they came to work for Nick remains something of a mystery, as there is no evidence that Nick ever contacted his extended family or attempted a reconciliation with him. Nick had been told by his father that he had no extended family, that Simon was an only child and that his father and mother had died before Nick was born. The last, at least, was true, but the rest was a lie. Nick, a skilled detective, undoubtedly discovered that his father had deceived him when he attempted to discover his forebears. The lack of knowledge on the part of Ben Carter or John Carter about Nick’s existence says much about Nick’s opinion of his uncles and family; like his father, he was no doubt appalled at their actions before and during the Civil War. However, Nick undoubtedly arranged matters so that they became aware of the possibility of work with him. That they did not help him for longer or more often than they did indicates that, perhaps, their attitudes towards African-Americans was not far removed from their father’s, and that Nick had no use for men or women whose attitudes were so limited.

Other helpers included: Ida Jones, a somewhat mysterious and distinctive figure, intelligent and capable, whose lengthy disappearance in the late 1890s and early 1900s will be addressed in a future article; the students in Nick’s “detective school for boys,” including Bob Ferret, Jack Burton, Buff Hutchinson, and “Roxy the Flowergirl,” a street woman who entered the school against the wishes of nearly everyone involved and became its best graduate.

Finally, Nick was helped for several years by “Ten-Ichi,” the “son of the Mikado.” This figure could only have been Hirohito, who went on to become the Emperor of Japan during World War Two. Unfortunately, a fuller examination of “Ten-Ichi” will have to wait for a future article.

A close examination of the Clark Savage Jr. and Nick Carter reveal some interesting similarities--enough, in fact, that one might almost think to see the hand of design.

Both of their fathers were extremely accomplished men from distinguished families.
Both were the only child.
Both of their raised and trained to be supermen.
Both were taught special forms of exercise in order to make their bodies superior to ordinary humans’.
Both were bronze-skinned.
Both had grey eyes.
Both lost their fathers at relatively young ages.
Both never knew their mothers.
Both were internationally renowned crimefighters.
Both had a capable set of assistants and friends (See Appendix A).
Both formed sophisticated schools at which doing good was taught. (Admittedly, Clark Savage Jr. reformed criminals, while Nick Carter taught would-be detectives)
Both kept a wide array of weapons and gadgets (many of which they’d invented) on their bodies at all times.
Both had a colorful, grotesque, and evil menagerie of villains who bedeviled them.
Both had extremely problematic relationships with women.

¹ More detail on Trout, as well as on Shawnessy's ancestors, Thomas Carlyle and Natty Bumppo, may be found in Mr. P.J. Farmer's "The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage."

² Carter was very popular with Richmond's high society, being seen as something of a catch himself, despite his dubious background. It was bruited about that he was a war hero, having served heroically in the front lines or perhaps behind them in the fight against the British. Few details were available, however, and Carter would only smile cryptically when asked about them. Ronald and Laurelyn did not approve of the match, but Whitney, as with so many other things in her life, would go only her own way.

³ Carter suffered from amnesia regarding many of the details of his early life, to the point where he could not even remember his true age or his childhood. Carter's intellect was not the equal of either of his brothers. While the numerous blows to the head that John suffered during the Civil War and during the many Martian battles he took part in are the more likely explanation for these gaps in memory and dulling of the intellect, a potentially toxic "elixir of immortality" might also be the cause.

⁴ There is at least one account by a Turkish survivor of the sack of Tripolitsa (October 5, 1821) that mentions a sword-wielding black-haired “foreigner” who tried to stop the independence-hungry Greeks from massacring the Turks of Tripolitsa. If this “foreigner” was indeed John Carter, his participation in the Greek War of Independence anticipates that of the Philhellenes by two to three years. However, given the number of massacres that took place during the War, and the barbarous fashion in which the Greeks treated those Turks who were unfortunate enough to fall into their care, we can only hope that John Carter was either elsewhere or considerably lessened the treatment of the captured Turks.

⁵ Jack Carter is reported to have looked thirty years old until the day he died. It is indeed a shame that so much of his life is unknown, as his activities and the source of his extended vitality are interesting historical curiosities. If we do not accept the Shoemaker hypothesis (see Footnote 13 below) as the explanation for his own vitality and that of his children, then we are left to wonder what could have caused it. One line of discussion, advanced on ExtScience-L by Dr. Eckert of the Berlinischer Polytechnicum, focuses on the possibility of secondary exposure by Jack Carter to the radiation of the Wold Newton meteor, perhaps through a friendship with Sir Percy Blakeney or John Clayton, third Duke of Greystoke. I thank Dr. Eckert for his permission to include this theory, as it constitutes a section of his forthcoming monograph, “Secondary and Tertiary Effects of `Exotic’ Radiation on Unshielded Humans, or, It Doesn’t Take A Spider Bite.”

⁶ Consider that his only reference to it, in his (auto)biography, is a throwaway reference in the first chapter to his commission. Most Confederate veterans spoke with pride of their experience in the war. Why is Carter, who is normally given to rodotomontade, so reticent? One clue might be the branch of service he was a member of: the Cavalry. The Confederate Cavalry as a whole was involved in a higher number of atrocities than other arms of the Confederate army. It may be that Carter, deep down, was ashamed of what he’d done or seen during the war.

⁷ Why John Carter did not return to the Carter estates in Virginia is something of a mystery. As quoted, he saw himself as penniless, yet his own words in A Princess of Mars (the colorfully-titled first chapter of his (auto)biography) indicate that he had family:

"There was two little kiddies in the Carter family whom I had loved and who had thought there was no one on Earth like Uncle Jack."

The only plausible explanation is that John had been misinformed as to his grand-nephews' fate, and that he thought that the fall of Richmond had brought the deaths of not just Nate and Jack, but also of Ben, Jeremy and Walter. Such miscommunications between the home front and the combat soldiers was common during the Civil War, and John, as part of the cavalry, would have been particularly hard to reach. His statement about not having seen his family for "years" may be an oblique reference to his elder brother and that side of the Carter family, but is most likely hyperbole and should be dismissed, although given the circumstances under which he utters the statement it is certainly understandable.

⁸ An objection might be raised at this time that the genealogy related here does not entirely match the account given in The Gods of Mars. According to that book, Edgar Rice Burroughs himself was the narrator of the introductory frame of The Gods of Mars and was John Carter's nephew.

However, the facts of ERB's life are well known, and simply do not match up with the account given in Gods. John Carter is, as stated, a Virginian, as is the narrator of Gods; ERB was not a Virginian or even from the South, being a child of urban Chicago.⁹  John Carter refers to the narrator's "Uncle Ben;" neither of ERB's parents, George Tyler Burroughs and Mary Evaline Zieger Rice, had a brother named Ben. The narrator of Gods claims to have first met John Carter "nearly thirty-five years before." That statement was made in 1898, according to the internal chronology of Gods, meaning that ERB would have first met Carter in 1864. ERB was born on September 1, 1875, and in 1898 ERB was variously a soldier in the United States Army and the owner of a stationery store, his movements and personal history very well-recorded during this time. ERB simply cannot be the narrator of Gods.

That begs the question: Who, then, was the narrator of Gods, if it wasn’t Burroughs? The book, like all the Mars books, is credited to ERB, and the historical and literary textbooks record him as having been their author. We are left with one of two alternatives. The first is that Burroughs fudged the facts in Gods, so that statements credited to Carter were never uttered by him. While theoretically possible, too many other facts from Gods and the other “Burroughs” Mars novels have been independently confirmed for us to casually dismiss these statements and impute deception to Burroughs without more proof than has been found.

The second possibility, and the one MN’s research has established as most likely being true, is that the narrator of Gods is Walter, the actual nephew of John Carter. As for why Walter did not publish Gods under his own name, we must conclude that some sort of arrangement existed between Burroughs and the Carters. Burroughs, after all, published the first chapter of John Carter’s (auto)biography, A Princess of Mars. Perhaps Walter, aware in 1911 that the Carters’ wealth was declining, sold the rights to Gods and the next two chapters to Burroughs?

The actual authorship of the Mars books–Carter’s (auto)biography–remains a mystery.

⁹  ERB disliked this truth of his own life; while both sets of grandparents, the Rices and the Burroughses, were British who had immigrated to Massachusetts, ERB concentrated on his mother's relatives who had settled in Virginia in the 18th century, including "John Coleman."  ERB, to himself, was the direct descendant of Mary E.Z. Burroughs, a scion of the Old Dominion, but the sad truth was that he was of mostly Yankee blood and a child of Chicago, the hog butcher to the world.

¹⁰ Just why this is will remain, like so much else about the Carters' upbringing, a mystery. Perhaps Jack saw more of Whitney in Simon's face, and treated him with more care and affection because of that, and so instilled a kinder set of ethics in him. Perhaps John sensed this slight favoritism towards Simon on Jack's part and decided to rebel by becoming a mercenary, a profession seen as lacking honor by Richmond's high society. It might also be that the absence of a mother--Jack never remarried--left John to learn only aggression, rather than any softness, leaving him an essentially and purely masculine personality. Perhaps the culture of Richmond in the decades before the Civil War left him with a sense that learning martial skill was preferable to learning philosophy and ethics.

Or perhaps John was simply born to be a fighter, and never scrupled with (to him) petty matters like the morals of the side he chose to fight for.

¹¹ This explains why John did not seek Simon’s help after the war or refer to him in any way in his (auto)biography. The betrayal, as John must have seen it, would have been so painful that John finally refused to admit Simon’s existence, even to himself.

¹² I urge all of my readers to write to the Army and demand the reclassification of Simon Carter’s war records so that they may be attained by the FOIA. The address is:

Dep't. of Army
Chief, FOIA Division
USAIFC - P(ASQNS-OP-F)
Crystal Square II, Suite 201
1725 Jefferson Davis Parkway
Arlington,VA. 22202

More information on the proper use of the FOIA can be found at http://www.aclu.org/library/foia.html

¹³ The point has been raised (by, among others, D. Shoemaker in his “Genetics or Grit: A Brief Look at Extended Lifespans” in the New England Journal of Extraordinary Science (v99n3 March 1987) that in the case of certain very long-lived individuals, many of whom are members of the extended Wold Newton family, a greatly extended lifespan (which Shoemaker defines as both “life significantly prolonged [i.e., by four decades or more] beyond the national average” and as “youthfulness in appearance, vigor, strength, and sexual potency occurring past the chronological fifties and sixties of an individual”) is directly linked to an individual’s willpower and mental state, so that how an individual feels about himself and the world has a direct influence on how long that individual physically remains in his twenties and thirties. In other words, outlook and drive affect aging. If this is the case, then Simon Carter is an outstanding example of this theory.

¹⁴ The cynical reader might object that this is obviously impossible; Nicholas would easily set the world record for weightlifting with this lift, and that such an ability, done "with ease" by someone not trained in modern weightlifting methods, is not creditable. However, Nicholas' feats of strength are a matter of public record, and the cynical reader must simply accept them as fact. MN, in an allusive but frustratingly obscure set of footnotes, draws comparisons between Nicholas' strength and that of Clarke Savage and of Nicholas' distant relative, Bingham Harvard. MN also refers to a monograph on the subject of exceptional strength in the Wold Newton family, but I have to date been unable to locate it.

¹⁵ A talent shared by his distant relatives Hamilton Cleek and John Clay, among others.

¹⁶ It should be noted that Nicholas never grew taller than 5'4", while Clark Savage Jr. grew to a much more impressive height. However, Clark was taught a very special exercise regimen, one which would enhance his body while not adversely affecting it in any way. Simon, on the other hand, was not educated as Clark Sr. was, and therefore had no way of knowing what too much of the wrong kind of exercise would do to the still-maturing body of a teenager. Unfortunately, the exercises Simon put Nicholas through, while building his strength to unheard-of levels, also stunted his growth, leaving him eight to twelve inches shorter, as an adult, than his father, uncles, and grandfather.

¹⁷ Nicholas’ comments about his father in his lengthy (auto)biography are few after the first chapter, formal, unemotional, and almost perfunctory. They read not like the heartfelt comments of a devoted son, but rather like something written by a half-talented hack writer churning out penny-per-sentence stories on a deadline.

We know that this was not the case, of course. We can only conclude that Carter, exercising editorial control over his (auto)biography in much the same way that Clark Savage Jr. would, fifty years later, directed the publishers of his (auto)biography to rewrite his words, removing the real emotion from them.

Why was this done? We can only speculate, of course, and play laptop psychiatrists, but Nicholas’ relationship with his father, as we shall see, engendered a combination of great affection and an almost alienating idolization, a witch’s brew of love and insecurity whose effect on Nicholas was marked. It should come as no surprise to anyone that Nicholas did not wish his published comments on his father to betray these feelings, or his real comments on his father to be known, and so had them edited out.

¹⁸ Admittedly something of a cliché, but it truly is the most apposite phrase for the traumatic events that occurred. Consider that, as far as is known, Nicholas was raised in seclusion by Sim. Sim, from all accounts, traveled widely with Nicholas, bringing him to a number of men and women to be instructed in everything that might conceivably aid Nicholas in becoming a better detective, But Nicholas seems never to have had real childhood friends, his sole companion being Sim. Sim never remarried or (again, as far as is known–there are limits even to the scholarship of one such as MN) became romantically involved with another woman, so Nicholas never knew what it was to have a mother–something he and his father and uncle all had in common. (This puts Nicholas’...curious...behavior with women later in life into perspective) Nicholas never attended an actual school or college, never had his heart broken as a teenager by a woman (again, as far as is known), and never went through all those experiences which make up ordinary teenagers’ lives. It would seem that the only constant in Nicholas’ life, and the only true, long-lasting source of friendship and affection for him, was his father, making its removal that much more upsetting....

¹⁹ As mentioned in footnote 17, the account of Sim’s death, and the description of Nicholas’ reaction to it, are curiously muted. The only explanation for this can be editing, as any other person would have been far more overtly traumatized than was shown in the account given.

²⁰ The friendship was genuine, but we might also see it as Carter finding a father figure and responding to it, something he surely subconsciously desired. As mentioned, the closest individual in Carter's childhood and adolescence was his father, and Simon's sudden death must have left an awful hole in Nick's life. Nick quickly made other friends, but he seems to have had an affinity for older, capable, accomplished men such as his father, and the desire for a substitute father figure is clear. Were it not for the well-documented presence of women in his life we might speculate on Nick's sexual orientation based on this affinity, but all evidence points towards Nick being a well-adjusted heterosexual.

²¹ Unfortunately, the letters between Edith and Nick, which would provide an invaluable glimpse into Nick’s psyche, are the property of the Blake family, and they resolutely refuse to allow outside researchers to examine them.

²² Consider the pattern of Nick’s life. His beloved father is taken away from him by violence just as Nick has entered adulthood–a father, what is more, whose drive to make Nick the best detective in the entire world likely produced the “Football Father Syndrome” in Nick, where Nick is filled with his own drive to excel but also with a haunting dread of failing the father by somehow not succeeding. Further, Simon’s own status, as a well-respected detective in his own right, could only have added to Nick’s insecurity and suspicion that he would never quite be the man his father was. (The reader is directed to F. Exley’s A Fan’s Notes for a salient example of this phenomenon) Nick’s father is his only real friend; the experience of friendship with an equal would have been almost wholly alien to him. Nick’s exposure to women would have been minimal. Six years after the murder, as Nick is becoming established (in his own mind) as an independent figure, and one capable of and deserving of being loved, he meets a woman and falls in love with her. Reportedly there was a strong resemblance between his Ethel and Winnie Ludlow-Carter, whose portrait Nick had sitting on his desk for many years. Then Ethel, Nick’s first love, is cruelly murdered. Undoubtedly reeling from the shock, he flees (psychologically speaking) into the arms of another woman, his closest female friend–and she is murdered soon after the wedding. It is no wonder that so much of the recorded dialogue of the NCDL is wooden and unconvincing; an accurate recounting of what Nick said and perhaps did in the years following Ethel’s and Edith’s murders would have been an unstinting litany of sadness.

²³ One is forced to wonder at a person who could so rapidly go from being the potential victim of sexual abuse to falling in love with one’s victimizer, but that fits the pattern of relationships in Nick’s life. He seems to have always been rash and quick to love; hardly a mortal sin, but a dynamic that leads to long-term happiness. To paraphrase the Bard, Nick Carter “loved not wisely but too well.”

²⁴ Quartz died in Sing-Sing in 1932 immediately following a visit by Sir James Blake of Scotland Yard. Quartz’s death was suspicious, but Blake’s reputation was beyond reproach, and there was no evidence beyond the very circumstantial of his involvement. It was later discovered that Sir James was Edith Blake’s nephew, but the New York State Police somehow never got around to pursuing this crime any further....

²⁵ Chickering Valentine is an interesting case. He began service with Carter as a callow fourteen-year-old, an uneducated orphan with few skills. He ends it, in 1927, well into middle age, still serving as Nick Carter’s assistant but with an extremely impressive resume and a list of skills second only to Chickering Valentine. Yet very little attention has been paid to this man.

The primary reason for this, of course, is his complete disappearance after Carter’s retirement in 1927. While there was undoubtedly nothing untoward about it, Nick Carter’s steadfast refusal to comment on what his adopted son might be doing has always raised some questions. MN’s investigations have turned up nothing so far, but then, a man with such skill at disguise (he learned from the best) and so many contacts around the world could easily vanish.

More interestingly, his background before meeting Nick Carter was never revealed–not in Nick’s (auto)biography, at least. How was it that this man of such achievement and experience was orphaned and working at a ranch in Nevada? Where were his personal guardians? In this case, at least, MN was able to draw some interesting conclusions.

Chick Valentine was left as a newborn at an orphanage in Carson City, Nevada on Valentine’s Day, 1872. The detective Deadwood Dick had passed through Carson City nine months before and stayed a few days at the local brothel, so it was commonly thought that Dick was the father. MN has found nothing to contradict this conclusion; given Dick’s fecund lifestyle, it is entirely likely that Chick was his son, making his eventual step-mother, Ethel Ackermann, his sister. (For more information on Dick’s numerous offspring, see the next article in this series.)

Interestingly, exactly three years before, on Valentine’s Day, 1869, another recently-born child had been left at the orphanage’s steps. Nine months before that, Deadwood Dick had stayed in town for a week, and so that child, like Chick, was given the last name of “Valentine.” (Deadwood Dick’s last name was not widely known) That child, James Valentine, grew up to become one of the nation’s most proficient safe-crackers, unknown to the public at large but widely known and cursed by law enforcement officials. Valentine retired in 1909 after moving to Elmore, Arkansas and changing his name to “Ralph Spencer” and marrying Annabel Adams, the daughter of a local bank manager.
 
 

“Blake of Scotland Yard.” 1937.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Gods of Mars. 1913.
    A Princess of Mars. 1912.
Coryell, John Russell, and Ormond G. Smith. “The Old Detective’s Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of  Madison Square.” New York Weekly,
    September 18, 1886.
Dey, Frederick van Rensselaer. “An Amazonian Queen; or, Nick Carter Becomes a Gladiator.” New Nick Carter Weekly #530. February 23,
        1907.
    “Her Shrewd Double; or, Nick Carter’s Lady Assistant At Work.” Nick Carter Detective Library #68, 1892.
    “The Index of Seven Stars; or, Nick Carter Finds the Hidden City.” New Nick Carter Weekly #529. February 16, 1907.
    The “Night Wind” stories.
Farmer, Philip Jose. “The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage.” 1976.
Henry, O. “A Retrieved Reformation.” 1909.
Hyne, C.J. Cutcliffe. The Adventures of Captain Kettle. 1897.
“Latitude Zero.” 1941.
Lovecraft, H.P. “The Silver Key.” 1926.
    “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.” 1934.
Martinez, Michael. “A John Carter Timeline.”  1999.
Robeson, Kenneth. The Avenger #1. September 1939.
Taliaferro, John. Tarzan Forever. 1999.
Van Dine, S.S. The Benson Murder Case. 1926.
Ware, Edward. The “Jack Calhoun” stories.
Wellman, Manly Wade. The “Silver John” stories.
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. 1910.
Wood, Mrs. Henry. Johnny Ludlow: First Series.1889.