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Levi Carter was born in New Hampshire, and traveled around the Midwest for years. He spent time in Nebraska City and North Platte before coming to Omaha and opening the Omaha White Lead Works with several partners, which became one of the largest in the country. He later bought the partners out and renamed the company the Carter White Lead Works. Levi's first wife, Lydia Bliss Carter, died, and he married the much-younger Selina Coe, the daughter of his former partner in the lead works, General Isaac Coe. 

Carter Lake and Carter Park in Carter Lake, Iowa, were named after him; the lake had originally been called Cut-off Lake, since it is in the shape of a capital C and had been a channel of the Missouri River until 1877 when it was "cut off." Visit the official Carter Lake tourism website at http://www.cityofcarterlake.com/attractions. 

His only child, a son, died at age two, and is buried in the plot with Levi and his second wife, Selina; I do not know the whereabouts of his first wife. This is really an enormous plot, surrounded by a finely carved curb of white granite in a shield design, and it only houses those three people. Or I assume it does...you never know if a marker is there and the person isn't, or if there are other people in the plot, just not marked.

After Levi died, Selina married again and spent the rest of her life with her second husband, a prominent lawyer named Edward (or Edwin) J. Cornish, whose father was the first Park Commissioner of Omaha. Joel Cornish was one of the organizers of the Omaha park system, a series of parks connected by stately and curving boulevards. Contrary to what someone at Forest Lawn cemetery told me, our park system was not designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who did Central Park in New York City. It was H. W. S. Cleveland who had designed the scheme. 

Cornish in turn was buried in his own large family plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery when he died (in 1938), and Selina must have chosen to be buried in the Carter plot when she also died in 1938, a few months after Edward/Edwin. Please see the Forest Lawn page for the Cornish markers. They both apparently died in New York and were sent back to Omaha for burial. 

Rob Yasinsac has an extremely interesting page on his Hudson Valley Ruins site which chronicles the known history of the estate Edward and Selena owned in the Hudson Valley Highlands from 1917 to their deaths. Click here to read this great information.

Carter Plot

 

Carter Monument

 

Levi Carter

 

Selina Carter Cornish

 

Levi C. Carter (son)