Over a hundred years ago it was definitely an unconventional way to come up with a street name. The story of how Esmar Road in Ceres was named is an interesting one in Ceres history.

The name Esmar was first applied to a main stopping place on the wagon trail that would become Highway 99 and later a train station when the Central Pacific Railroad tracks were laid through the Valley in 1871. Conjuring up the name was Levi Carter who fathered a brood of children with wife Fama Eva Shoup Carter. Carter later built warehouses at Esmar Station from where his fresh and dried fruit was shipped.

Esmar was created by taking the first letters of the names of his children, in order of birth until you get to the final two kids:

E – Elma Jane Carter Hills (1851-1902)

S – Stanton Lester Carter (1853-1910)

M – Melbourne Benton Carter (1854-1926)

A – Althea Belle Carter Noyes (1869-1940)

R – Roscoe Linwood Carter (1863-1937)

The final resting places of the Carters were not recorded in local history accounts, opening up a mystery as none were buried in the Ceres Cemetery. But a bit of sleuthing online at the website findagrave.com filled in the missing information where local historical accounts have been deficient.

As it turns out, most of the Carters are at rest together in the Stockton Rural Cemetery with some other Stanislaus County pioneers like Louis Hickman, namesake of the town east of Hughson.

The Carter burials came at a time when the cemetery was indeed in a rural setting. Today Stockton has enveloped the cemetery and beyond.

The Carters are buried near the grave of Charles Dallas (1814-1883) and wife Elizabeth (1810-1859), who owned thousands of acres in the Hickman area. Early maps of Stanislaus County show the name of Dallas where Hickman is today, with the name change occurring after Dallas’ daughter Mary married Louis McLean Hickman. The Hickmans are buried in a grand granite mausoleum that resembles the historic Hickman church they built based on architecture they saw in France.

The first of the Carters to be buried in Stockton was Marcella Alinda Carter who died at the age of seven on Aug. 14, 1866 when the Carters were living in Stockton. Local history books don’t mention the little girl, who was born in Illinois and died for unknown reasons.

Stanton Carter is buried in a different section of the Stockton cemetery without a headstone, which is surprising given that Carter became a judge. His unmarked grave is located between the grave of Frank Nicol and James Zacharias. 

Two other Carter children are buried in other cities. Melbourne Carter is buried in Modesto. Althea is buried in the Forest Home Cemetery in Marinette, Wisconsin where she married Frank Noyes, editor and publisher of the Marinette Eagle-Star.

A short distance from the Carter graves is that of the well-known Captain John McMullin. The Dallases were in the ground six years by the time a large funeral service for murdered Judge David Terry in 1889 took place just a stone’s throw away. Terry, known to be a hothead, was shot to death at the Lathrop train station after he physically assaulted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. Terry himself had previously killed popular U.S. Senator David Colbreth Broderick in a duel.

It’s not surprising that the Carters –among the first to settle and farm in the Ceres area and lived in the stately mansion that faces Highway 99 between Ceres and Keyes – are buried in Stockton. That’s where the family took root after trying out different locations for a homestead after reaching California.

Born in 1822, Levi Carter was a New York native who started working early in lumbering in upstate. He soon drifted over the border into Canada where he met and married a Canadian born girl of Dutch parentage, Fama Eva Shoup around 1850.

Their first child, Elma Jane Carter, so important to Ceres’ history, was born in Canada in May 1851. They re-crossed the border into Jefferson County in time for their son, Stanton Lester Carter, to be born Jan. 16, 1853, in the town of Clayton, NY.

When Stanton was a year old, Levi moved his family to northwest Illinois where he farmed just outside of Mount Carroll. It was there, in November 1854, a third child, Melbourne B., was born.

Six years later Levi was lured west and left Fama (sometimes named Fannie or Annie) and the children behind on the farm and joined the wagon train of Benjamin Sanders, a family connection, as it passed through from nearby McHenry County, Ill. It was May 1, 1860. The wagon train of eight adults and four children reached Washoe country of Nevada and stayed there for a time. They continued to California and chose as their final stopping place Eight Mile Corners on the Sonora Road (eight miles from Stockton). It was late September 1860 and Levi looked over Northern California that fall and winter before he decided to settle around Stockton.

In early 1861, he sailed from San Francisco for Panama and crossed the isthmus to return to Illinois by way of the east coast.

The Carters sold their farm and journeyed to California with another small party along the route he had travelled with Sanders. The trip involved a battle with Indians on Goose Creek, near the border of Idaho and Nevada in which two members of the party were killed. Three months later the Carters were in Washoe, Nevada. Mining still held little appeal and the Carters soon moved on to Diamond Springs in El Dorado County. Levi then settled in Folsom in Sacramento County where he started a teaming business.

Around 1863, however, when another son, Roscoe L., was born, Levi began thinking of the Valley and the land he had seen there on his first trip. He bought land near Eight Mile Corners where his earlier travelling companions had stayed. Soon he began expanding his farming interests south into Stanislaus County. With land acquired by John Mitchell, and owned briefly by a James L. Johnston, Levi started his Ceres holdings.

The Carters maintained a sizable home in Stockton as the children were in need of schooling and lived in the Stanislaus home during plowing, planting and harvesting seasons. Mr. Carter built grain warehouses on his Ceres land and, as news of the coming of the Central Pacific Railroad reached teen-aged Elma Jane she tapped into her classical readings and came up with the name “Ceres” from the Roman goddess of grain and the harvest, for her father’s granary.

At this time, Levi Carter and Daniel Whitmore started competing to establish influence over the fledging establishment of Ceres.

Daniel Whitmore had also come to San Joaquin County from the east coast. He started first on a site on the south bank of the Tuolumne north and east of Carter’s holdings at present-day Ceres. As was customary, Whitmore and his sons also returned to their home in San Joaquin County between harvests. Each of the men added steadily to their holdings, Carter branching out in several directions, Whitmore moving south.

Eventually the significance of the Carter’s imprint on Ceres history would be eclipsed by Daniel Whitmore who in 1869 built his home on what would become the town of Ceres. On Nov. 8, 1872, a deed was recorded in which Levi Carter sold Daniel Whitmore the land on which the town of Ceres now rests. 

In 1874, Richard Whitmore, Daniel’s brother who laid out the town plan, also bought his first Ceres land from Carter. John G. Annear and others who figure in early Ceres history also bought land from Carter.

Both Levi and Daniel continued to vie with one another in land acquisition and sales, and for status along the new railroad where Carter had built his warehouses. 

In the 1895 Ceres Reunion booklet written by one of the Whitmore wives, “the life of Ceres commenced” when Daniel Whitmore moved his family into their Fifth Street home in January, 1871. Though the Carters – including Levi – were still living on the family acres and some were in attendance at the reunion, the Carters’ part in the establishment of the area is not mentioned in the booklet.

In 1895, three years before his death and a year after Daniel Whitmore died, Levi Carter still owned land between Service and Keyes roads, bordered by Mitchell Road on the west and Faith Home Road on the east.

Levi and Fanna died three weeks apart in 1898 at their home south of Ceres. Son Melbourne, with other heirs, held on to the property until after the turn of the century. By that time, Daniel Whitmore and son Clinton had amassed more land than the Carters.

The Carter mansion and 112 acres of irrigated alfalfa were purchased in 1905 by Marcellus Bowen Vilas, another New York native who first trekked to California in 1859.