Robert S. Carr was born in Guernsey county, Ohio, November 17, 1846; his father's family moved to Kanawha county, Virginia, in 1855. The father, James Carr, came to America from County Down, Ireland, when he was less than seven years old, and settled in Guernsey county, Ohio, grew up as a poor mechanic (plasterer), and reared a family; necessarily his son Robert had very limited educational advantages; he never went to school an entire year in his life, only to the three months winter sessions; but by after-application and observation, he fitted himself for the active career of usefulness he has lived. Much of that fitness he credits his wife with helping him to gain - he having married in 1870, an estimable, intelligent lady, Miss Julia E. Wilson, daughter of John Wilson (nephew of old Andrew Donnelly) and his wife, who was Elizabeth Neal, and was born in the fort at Charleston during the days of Indian warfare.

Robert Carr learned the trade of plastering with his father, but has not followed it. In 1861, when seventeen years old, he entered the Confederate army, served one year, was captured and confined fourteen months in the military prison at Wheeling. After his release he went to the southwest and steamboated on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers until 1865, when he joined his father at Charleston, and has continued since to reside there. He at first engaged in various pursuits for a livelihood. By and by he drifted again into steamboating, first on the steamer "John Kenna." He was also owner of a store in Charleston, which he traded for the steamboat "Ella Layman," which boat he still owns and runs in 1889. He afterwards organized the "Ella Layman Towboat Company," of which he was made and still continues, President and Superintendent. The company does an immense business in handling coal and coke, besides freight and passenger traffic, own quite a number of steamboats and barges, and have in their enterprise done as much, if not more than any other organization to develop the vast resources of the Kanawha Valley.

Without any unusual inclination thereto, but rather because of his deep interest in all that pertained to the better interests of his State and county, Mr. Carr found himself finally actively involved in the political struggles of Kanawha county. He had affiliated with the Democratic party up to 1876; but in the Peter Cooper campaign he became a zealous Greenback party advocate, and continues such. He was elected County Commissioner; a member of the County Court, and to the City Council two terms, in which he served on several of the most important committees. In 1887 he was nominated for the West Virginia Senate by the Greenbackers, endorsed by the Republicans, and was elected by eighty-seven majority in a Democratic District of a former 600 majority; and that, too, against a strong opponent - W.E. Chilton, Esq., law partner of Senator Kenna, a popular and worthy gentleman. Mr. Carr carried his own county in the District by 1,447 votes - at that time the largest majority it ever gave, except the vote he received (1,700) for County Court.

Everyone remembers the memorable struggle in the State Senate for the position of President of that body. Some of its ablest members - among the foremost men in the State - were candidates for the coveted seat, notwithstanding its laborious duties and responsibilities - especially so during that session, as the Joint Assembly were called upon, under the Senate President presiding, to elect a United States Senator. After eleven days' balloting and any amount of shrewd party wire manipuling Capt. Carr was elected and presided over that Senate during the session with dignity, marked indiscrimination, rare parliamentary ability and with unusual satisfaction to the members. Indeed, in the performance of its most delicate duties, he surprised his most sanguine friends.

It was during this session that the remarkable quadrilateral Gubernatorial contest took place - remarkable from the fact that the failure of the Legislature to open and declare upon the returns of the election who had been elected Governor, threw into the conflict at one time four claimants for the office. The incumbent was Governor E. Willis Wilson, whose term expired March 4, 1889, by the constitutional limit; but he, on the assumption that no successor had been declared elected by the Legislature, claimed it became his privilege and duty to hold over until such successor was legally declared Governor. Gen. Nathan Goff, the Republican candidate, Judge A.B. Fleming, the Democratic candidate, each declared himself elected "by the face of the returns" and demanded the office, but Governor Wilson refused to yield the office to either. Robert S. Carr, as President of the Senate, filed a petition in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, March 14, 1889, averring: That on the 4th of March, 1889, the office of Governor of the State had become and remains vacant, and that under section 16, article 7, of the Constitution, it was his right and duty to act as Governor; that, at the last election held for Governor, Nathan Goff and A.B. Fleming were the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes for that office; that Goff, claiming to have received a greater number than Fleming, on the 4th of March, 1889, he took the oath of office and demanded possession of the office, but that E. Willis Wilson, a private citizen, found in its possession, refused to admit Goff; that Goff asked the Court for a mandamus to compel Wilson to surrender the office to him, and that the Court held that he (Goff) was not entitled to the write, and that the act of Goff in taking the oath was void. The petition of Senator Carr further stated that either Goff or Fleming was elected, but that both were and continued to be under such disability as prevented their acting; that Fleming failed to qualify, and for that reason and others was disabled from entering on the duties of the office, and that Goff, for the reasons stated in the opinion of the Supreme Court (Goff vs. Wilson), is disabled from so doing. Senator Carr had also demanded the office from Wilson, but was likewise refused admission. He alleged, and apparentely under the State Constitution, that Wilson had no right to hold the office beyond the Constitutional limit of his term, and hence asked the mandamus compelling Wilson to yield the office to him. The Supreme Court took the other view of the law in the case under the Constitution, refused the mandamus, and Wilson continued to act as Governor pending investigation of the contest by the Joint Assembly's Committee.

At the adjournment of the Legislature, Captain Carr resumed his usual business with renewed interest and application. His political career, however, cannot be considered ended; for his exceeding popularity, as evinced by the unprecedented majorities given him for the various offices he filled, indicates the wishes and intent of the people that he should give the State the benefit of his rare business and executive abilities. The future of such a man it is difficult to point up to.

That a man with comparatively no education at the age of twenty-one, with no capital (other than indomitable will to plan, courage to attempt, industry to accomplish, and pluck to hold on), and almost a stranger when he landed at Charleston - that a man with such a start should succeed as Robert S. Carr has, is but another evidence of the possibilities in this wonderful young State to every man of energy and integrity. Poverty never conquered him; he conquered poverty; illiterate at the start, he secured, with no other aid than his wife and close study and observation, a very fair amount of learning, to which he happily added a knowledge of human nature acquired in his rough contact with the world, and a natural ability for quick, prompt, successful business ventures, with executive qualities of a high order. These pushed him inevitably to the fore front of the masses; but the chief factor in his popularity with the people is, doubtless, the fact that he has an Irish heart beating always to the music of the grand brotherhood of man, thus giving him those broad sympathies and brotherly impulses that ever lead him to extend a helping hand to his fellows. Quick as any Irishman to resent an insult, he is slow, as chivalry itself, to commit one. The height of his ambition, he says, is to help his friends.