Glass negative of W K Carter

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We recently had the good fortune to purchase a rare image of King Carter parked outside the original National Hotel in Cambridge (shown above). It is a glass-plate negative in excellent condition and is possibly taken at a similar time to an image already in our collection (shown below). It shows Carter’s stable “Cambridge Horse Bazaar, W K Carter” roughly where The Sample Room now stands at 8 Lake Street.

“Cambridge Horse Bazaar, W K Carter” on Lake Street, Cambridge

King Carter, the namesake of Carter’s Flat and Carter’s Crescent, was a tall athletic American. An experienced coach driver, he established himself as proprietor of a coach service based in Cambridge. His coach to Auckland held 25 passengers and the horses were changed nine times. Spades were needed to dig the coach out of the mud, and when climbing steep hills, the male passengers had to walk to make it easier for the horses. Carter used carrier pigeons for sending messages between his various stopping places and Cambridge.

He was always smartly dressed, usually in a brown frock coat with wide brimmed hat, carrying a gold-headed walking stick and sporting a white Van Dyke beard and flowing moustache. He settled with his wife Mary Ann in a house in Carter’s Flat. She was over 20 years younger than her husband, but he far outlived her. He died in 1918 aged 95 and is buried at Hautapu

Written and researched by Karen Payne, July 2023