John Carter and his wife Jane were the first teachers at Barham Primary School.

John Carter was born in Canterbury in 1823, the son of John Carter (1784 – 1858) and Charlotte E Carter (nee Vidgen) (1791 – 1854). He died in Barham on 18th September 1892.

Jane Carter (nee Sutherland) was born in Canterbury in 1826, the daughter of James Sutherland (1766 – 1841) and Sarah Sutherland (1773 – 1849). She was a late birth for her mother being born when her mother was 51 years old.

The 1851 census records them living in Barham as a schoolmaster at the National School with children Charlotte, Charles, Fanny and Frederick. This was also known as The Dame School housed in another building shown on the left.

The present school was opened in 1858 and the 1861 census records them as living at the new School House with children Charlotte, Charles, Fanny, Frederick, William, Arthur, Mary, John and Annie.

The 1871 census also records them as living at the School House with children Charlotte, Annie and Harry. 

The 1881 census records them as living at the School House with children John and Mary plus Emma Skinner aged 22, a schoolmistress.

The 1891 census records them as living at the School House with Charlotte.

Charlotte Carter was born in Barham on 26th January 1847. She left Barham after 1871 and was recorded as living at in the schoolhouse in Edwardstone, Suffolk in the 1881 census whilst employed as schoolmistress. She must have

returned to support her mother with her father being close to death in 1891. 

The 1901 census records both living in 

Gloddith, Grove Road, Ramsgate with two servants and four boarders – two school teachers, one nurse and a shop assistant, her mother dying on 7th April 1901.

By 1911 Charlotte had moved to Willesden in London aged 64. It is believed that she died in the 3rd quarter of 1923 in Hampstead.

The Carter family ran the village school from its inception in 1858, through a period when the church dictated the curriculum (and the farms dictated days when their children were essential to its business) to its change to largely secular in the 1870 Education Act, to the last logbook reference of a Carter family member on 25th July 1892, two months before John Carter's death.