To the sloop-landing, near the mouth of Carter's Creek, ships came directly from foreign ports with cargoes of clothing, furniture and luxuries for the manor, and shoes and other necessities for the white serfs and negro slaves. These vessels went away loaded with tobacco and grain.
Robert Carter was aware of everything that went on at Corotoman and on his other plantations, not the smallest detail escaped him. He knew when a slave's shoes didn't fit, or when a servant's child needed medical attention. When his sons were in school in England he followed their progress by remote control and never let them forget that he was holding the purse-strings—"Mind your book," he wrote his son, Landon. He wanted them to have a classical education, a thorough understanding of Latin and English. He also wanted them to have religious training.
Robert Carter was a politician as well as a planter. He held every high office in the county and colony, and even acted as governor for more than a year.
But most of all, the land fascinated Robert Carter. He loved the rich virgin soil that would grow tobacco. It was the same thing as growing money. But in about three years time tobacco had worn out the soil and new fields must always be on tap in this tobacco game.
Carter's big opportunity came in 1702 when he was appointed as a land agent of the Northern Neck proprietary. He set up a land office at Corotoman and began to acquire lands for himself as well as for others. He had accumulated 20,000 acres by 1711, at which time he lost the agency to Thomas Lee, of Westmoreland.
In 1719 Carter regained the agency and again became the representative of the Fairfax interests in the Northern Neck. In 1726 he took an even bolder step by leasing the entire Northern Neck from the proprietor for a fixed rental of 450 pounds a year. Now he had the income from the quit-rents for the entire region.
When King Carter died in 1732, he owned 330,000 acres of land, a thousand slaves and 10,000 pounds sterling. The latter fact was remarkable because there was such a small amount of metallic money in the colony. He also left more than a hundred head of horses, over two thousand cattle and swine and several hundred sheep. These slaves and stock were scattered over his various plantations. His estate also included indentured servants, ships and nautical equipment, crops, farming equipment, cabins and mansions, furnishings, personal effects and a library of 521 volumes.
King Carter had done well for himself, and well for the proprietor. He had also opened up the back lands of the Northern Neck to settlers, which automatically forced the Indians back.
King Carter was a builder. He had a large brick kiln at Corotoman, which doubtless furnished the bricks for some of his homes and the church. He built a breakwater at Corotoman to save the waterfront from being washed away by tide and storm. It was made of huge rocks, probably brought as ballast in some of the ships. He dug a well at Corotoman and had it lined with stone. It was a far-cry from the early settlers' "spring near the door."
King Carter built a road from Corotoman to Lease-Land (Fredericksburg), a distance of almost a hundred miles. It was known as the King's Highway.