Searching for Barton Carter

The Story of a Young American Hero

In 1936, Barton Carter, a talented young man from a wealthy New England family, turned away from the future laid out for him to fight against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War—and disappeared in the midst of that fight when he was only 23 years old.

Carter had just been jilted by his English fiancée two weeks before their wedding when a Spanish Nationalist acquaintance asked him to travel to Barcelona to retrieve some of his family’s possessions. Carter jumped at the chance for an adventure and a change of scene. During his two-week Spanish sojourn, his beliefs were radically changed by exposure to the country’s civil war, driving his involvement in Communism—a political movement in opposition to everything for which his family stood. He also found himself working with Spanish orphans and serving as the administrator of four orphanages, where he saved the lives of thousands of children.