Jackson Carter (post-war name: Lilburn Jackson) was born in September 1836. Carter was a slave of John Coles Carter, Jr., of Albemarle County, Virginia. The Carter family traced its heritage back to Robert "King" Carter, the wealthiest man in colonial Virginia. John Coles Carter, Jr., migrated from Virginia to Missouri with his father in 1852. Jackson Carter worked as a farmer on the Carter plantation in Pike County, Missouri. Carter married Jane A. Mack in a slave marriage in 1862. Together they had one child before the war and twelve children after, including Fannie, born in 1868; Maggie, born in 1870; Fred, born in 1874; John, born in 1876; Mary, born in 1879; Lilburn, born in 1880; Henry, born in 1882; Fay, born in 1889; and Moses, born November 11, 1891. In October 1863, Carter ran away from the Carter plantation in Pike County.
Carter enlisted in the army at the age of 25 as a private on January 18, 1864, in Louisiana, Missouri, and mustered in on January 29 at the Benton Barracks in St. Louis. His service record describes him as 5 feet, 4 inches tall, with black hair, black eyes, and dark copper complexion. He first served in Company E of the 67th USCT Infantry Regiment. Later, he transferred to Company D of the 65th USCT Infantry Regiment on August 15, 1865. Carter received promotion twice, once from private to corporal on May 1, 1864, and subsequently from corporal to sergeant on September 12. In June 1864, Carter spent time in a hospital while sick in Port Hudson, Louisiana. With the 65th USCT and 67th USCT, Carter spent most of the war in Louisiana. Carter and his wife Jane remarried in Louisiana in December of 1865 to get married under the "new constitution." He mustered out due to expiration of his term of service on January 8, 1867, in Baton Rouge.
Following the war, Carter and his family lived in Quincy, Illinois. Carter went by Lilburn Jackson, which he considered his real name, and only used the Carter name for military matters. He worked as a laborer in Quincy for fourteen years before becoming a plasterer. In 1890, he began receiving a pension of $6 per month for rheumatism. This was raised to $12 by 1905 due to the additional ailments of catarrh, heart disease, obesity, and senile debility. Around 1901, Carter began living at the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, where he would stay for several years. Carter died in his own home in Quincy of hemiplegia, paralysis of half of the body, on February 1, 1907. Following his death, his widow Jane and at least one of his children were able to secure pensions beginning in 1907, for $12 and $2 per month respectively. Jane's pension was finally raised to $20 per month in 1916. A woman named Amanda Hill also claimed to have been the widow of Jackson Carter, but the pension agency ultimately denied her claim and ruled in Jane's favor.
