As if Jimmy Carter's closest relatives weren't colorful enough - his brother was known for his Billy Beer - the former president wants to know more about the descendants of his posse-riding, gun-toting great-great-grandfather.
"I'm doing this with more than a bit of trepidation," Carter said. "Sometimes it's good not to know too much about your own family."Jokes aside, Carter is serious about bringing together the hundreds of direct descendants of his great-great-grandfather Wiley Carter. A reunion is planned in May in his hometown of Plains.
While he was president, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave him a leather-bound book documenting 12 generations of his family from the church's repository of genealogical information.
Then the National Enquirer hired a team of researchers to examine Georgia courthouse records and newspaper files for a story that played up the seedy side of his family tree.
"What I remember is that several direct Carter ancestors had been involved in an unusual series of violent acts," Carter said.
His search has produced some hair-raising details.
Wiley Carter himself killed a man for stealing a slave. His son Littleberry Walker Carter, the former president's great-grandfather, was killed in 1873 in a gunfight with his business partner over money from a carousel.
Carter's grandfather was fatally shot in the back in 1903 after a fight with a man who stole a table from the family store.
Then there's Wiley Carter's youngest son, Sterling. He lit out for Texas in the 1870s and made a living hauling buffalo bones in a two-fisted, Wild West territory and later serving as Roberts County sheriff.
"As far as I know, most of the other family members have been both law-abiding and peaceful in nature," Carter said.
Using a computer program that traces family history, along with a little ingenuity and the help of a cousin, Carter has tracked down hundreds of relatives, including a teacher in North Carolina he found last week. When he called, she was skeptical and tested him with questions about her family history.
"She didn't believe for a long time I was Jimmy Carter, former president," he said in a telephone interview.
Carter decided last year to plan a reunion for the 200th anniversary of Wiley Carter's birth. He has a database of 2,000 names going back 12 generations and estimates there are about 500 living direct descendants of Wiley Carter.
"It's just kind of like a rolling stone. Different people have been sending me more and more information about how they may be a part of my family," Carter said.
Wiley Carter was a member of a posse in northern Georgia when he killed a man over a slave. After feuding with the dead man's family, he moved south to Plains.
He had 12 children: Amanda, Caroline, Calvin, Euphrasia, Littleberry Walker, Jane, Julia, Louisiana, Wiley, Ann, Jesse and Sterling. The former president said he's particularly interested in finding the descendants of Wiley Carter's daughters. Their married names were Sammons, Lyon, Beckworth, Hart, Rumph, Abbott, Mize and Ford.
Prospective relatives can send Carter and his cousin, Betty Pope, the names of their ancestors, and they will be entered into the computer database.
"When Jimmy came up with the idea, we laughed about it and said `You know, there are going to be would-be hopefuls coming out of the woodwork.' But we're keeping it to direct descendants," Pope said.
She has been doing a bit of sleuthing herself, placing newspaper advertisements and writing letters to possible relatives. She estimated the two of them have found 300 long-lost relatives through their efforts.
Because of that, Carter learned what happened to Sterling Carter.
"For 160 years we didn't hear a word from them. This past year, I got a letter from Sterling's descendants," Carter said.
John E. Kinney, a retired lawyer in Austin, Texas, wrote the former president with news of Sterling, including details of his death.
"On his deathbed, according to family history, Sterling asked that he be buried between his first and second wives, but to tilt him a little towards (his second wife)," Kinney said.