When Amy Carter’s son joined Boy Scout Troop 101 in Atlanta, she introduced herself to the other parents as Amy. Scoutmaster Tom Rosenberg recognized her immediately. Most of the other families had no idea who she was, and that was fine with her.
She came to meetings. She and her husband Jay showed up to help and stayed when others left early. When she eventually offered the family’s homestead in Plains, Georgia for a troop campout, the connection became impossible to ignore. The troop’s leadership had known all along, but by that point, most parents had only ever known her as Amy, the one who kept showing up.
Her son’s name is Errol Carter Kelly. He is the youngest grandchild of former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, born in 2010 to Amy and her second husband, John Joseph “Jay” Kelly. He is fifteen or sixteen years old as of 2026. The public record on his life is thin by design.
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At a Glance: Errol Carter Kelly
| Full Name | Errol Carter Kelly |
| Birth Year | 2010 |
| Age (2026) | 15–16 |
| Mother | Amy Lynn Carter |
| Father | John Joseph “Jay” Kelly |
| Grandparents | Jimmy Carter (1924–2024), Rosalynn Carter (1927–2023) |
| Half-Brother | Hugo James Wentzel (b. 1999) |
| Hometown | Atlanta, Georgia |
His Parents: Amy Carter and Jay Kelly
Amy Carter is the only daughter of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, born October 19, 1967, in Plains, Georgia. She lived in the White House from age nine through thirteen during her father’s presidency. The national press covered her constantly throughout those years, and she had no say in any of it.
In the 1980 presidential debate, Jimmy Carter told 80 million viewers that he had asked his daughter what the most important issue in the election was. She had said nuclear arms. Amy was twelve years old.
She later earned a master’s degree in Art History from Tulane University and serves on the board of counselors of the Carter Center. She was first married to computer consultant James Gregory Wentzel from 1996 to 2005. Their son, Hugo James Wentzel, was born in 1999. In 2023, Hugo appeared on Season 2 of the ABC competition show Claim to Fame, built around contestants concealing their famous family ties. In 2007, Amy married John Joseph “Jay” Kelly. Errol was born three years later.
Jay Kelly is one of the few people connected to the Carter family about whom almost nothing has been publicly documented. His name, his 2007 marriage to Amy, and his regular participation in Errol’s Scout troop account for the entirety of what is confirmed on the record. He and Amy are both active in Troop 101, consistently present and involved.
Amy Carter spent her childhood as a public subject she never consented to be. She has not repeated that with her children.
A Weekend in Plains That Said More Than Any Interview
The most detailed account of Errol Carter Kelly’s life that currently exists was not published by a newspaper or magazine.
In April 2023, Scouting Magazine, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America, ran a piece by staff writer Aaron Derr covering a weekend Troop 101 spent at Jimmy Carter National Historic Park in Plains, Georgia. The visit took place in late 2022, a few months before Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in February 2023. Errol was twelve years old and a First Class Scout at the time.
During the weekend, the troop:
- Visited Carter’s boyhood farm, where he lived until leaving for college in 1941
- Painted a fence on National Park Service property
- Collected pecans distributed to residents facing food insecurity in the local area
- Worked on the Fingerprinting merit badge with a Secret Service agent who was also an Eagle Scout, who also walked the troop through the equipment carried to protect the former president and first lady
Shortly after 4 p.m. on the final day, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter came out of their home for their afternoon walk. Rosalynn was using a rollator. Jimmy was in a wheelchair, tended by a nurse, wearing an Atlanta Braves shirt. Rosenberg described him afterward as conversational and strong, proud of the town and the park.
The Scouts walked alongside them for about fifteen minutes. Errol stayed close to his grandmother the entire time, making sure she moved steadily along the paved trail. When the walk ended, the troop lined up and saluted. Rosalynn raised her hand and returned it.
Amy spoke on the record about why she had enrolled Errol in Scouts:
“I wanted Errol to have a civics education. Of course, he loves the camping. But the civics education is what really resonates with me. Errol loves the adventures. Our troop is great about doing outings we probably would never have experienced with just us as a family.”
Errol was also quoted directly in the same piece:
“Usually when I go there, it’s just me and my family. It was really interesting to have other people there. It was fun.”
Jimmy Carter had previously served as Scoutmaster for his son Chip’s Boy Scout troop and later received the BSA’s Silver Buffalo Award, the organization’s highest recognition for distinguished service to youth. Scouting in this family is not incidental.
Standing at His Grandmother’s Casket
Rosalynn Carter died on November 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
Nine days later, her tribute service was held at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on the Emory University campus in Atlanta. President Biden attended, along with Vice President Harris, all four living former first ladies, and Jimmy Carter himself, ninety-nine years old and still in hospice care in Plains, making one of his final public appearances.
The official Carter Center memorial programme confirms that Errol Carter Kelly was the only grandchild selected to read scripture at the service. He stood at the lectern and read Matthew 5:6–8, from the Sermon on the Mount:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
He was thirteen years old.
The programme listed him formally under “Grandchildren of Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter” as a named presenter, alongside his cousin Jason Carter, who delivered a full tribute. Three of Rosalynn’s great-grandchildren also read scripture. Amy Carter presented a reading. All eleven surviving grandchildren, including Hugo James Wentzel, served as honorary pallbearers.
The walk in Plains had been eleven months before.
Is Errol Carter Kelly a Boy or a Girl?
Errol Carter Kelly is male.
Following the November 2023 tribute service, pool photo captions filed by AFP/Getty Images and UPI both identified him as Rosalynn Carter’s “granddaughter.” The error spread widely and remains the source of most ongoing public confusion about his gender.
The record is consistent across credible independent sources:
- Associated Press pool photographer Andrew Harnik correctly captioned him as “grandson” in his filed images from the same service
- The official Carter Center memorial programme lists him by full name as a grandchild and named scripture presenter
- Scouting Magazine referred to him as a twelve-year-old boy throughout its April 2023 piece
- Wikipedia’s Amy Carter entry identifies Errol as Amy’s son
- IMDb’s Amy Carter biography lists “Errol Carter Kelly (b. 2010)” among her children
The AFP error was a factual mistake made during the pool photography workflow at the tribute service. It was not a statement about Errol’s identity.
Where He Fits in the Carter Family
Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter had four children: Jack, Chip, Jeff, and Amy. They had twelve grandchildren in total. One, Jeremy Davis Carter, died in December 2015. Among the eleven surviving, Errol is the youngest.
His cousins include Jason Carter, a former Georgia state senator and current chair of the Carter Center board of trustees, and Sarah Rosemary Carter, a neuroscientist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists.
Jimmy Carter died on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100, becoming the longest-lived president in U.S. history. He is buried alongside Rosalynn in a memorial garden in Plains, Georgia, on grounds overlooking the pond they built and fished together. The gravesite opened to the public in July 2025 as part of Jimmy Carter National Historical Park.
The woman who raised Errol Carter Kelly spent her own childhood in front of cameras she did not choose, her name spoken in a presidential debate before she turned thirteen. She grew up, kept her life to herself, and enrolled her son in the Boy Scouts to learn civics.
He got something else along the way. He got to walk beside his grandmother through the grounds where his grandfather was raised, in a Scout uniform, making sure she didn’t fall. He got to stand at a lectern in Atlanta and read three verses from the Beatitudes over her casket, in front of the most formally assembled room in American public life.
Those two moments are the most that anyone outside his immediate family knows about who Errol Carter Kelly is. He is fifteen or sixteen years old today. What the public record on him looks like ten years from now is a question only he can answer.
