Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland
Charles the Signer of the Declaration of Independence
There were a great many more Founding Fathers. Several of those lesser-known men who played key roles in the creation of the United States of America were Catholics.
Chief among them were three members of the Carroll family of Maryland: Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence; his cousin Daniel Carroll; and Daniel Carroll's brother John Carroll, who became America's first Catholic bishop. Ancestry.com lists John as a brother to Charles -
Portrait of Charles Carroll (Jr.)
While we have known about this connection for some time, we were never certain how the Carrolls connected to our clan...although we were told it was on the MURRIN side. It is likely this "Murrin" connection is through the McCloskys, but we have not discounted the Timoneys either. Family lore says that these MURRIN ancestors lived in America prior to the American Revolution.
The Carroll family appears prominently in the early history of our country - both in the religious and secular worlds. Charles' brother, John, was the first bishop in America. One of the things that John Carroll championed was removing the "anti-Papist" legislation in New York state in 1809. A cousin (or brother), Daniel, also played a prominent role during the revolutionary war.
Now... while it is possible that we connect directly to Charles Carroll, it is more likely that our family links to Charles' father, Charles the Settler, and specifically through one of his many children. Charles the Settler came to America in the late 1600s. working for Lord Baltimore in Maryland.
Bishop John Carroll, son of Charles (the settler) and Mary Brooke.
Charles the Settler
This Charles Carroll is the father of Charles Carroll who was one of the signers of the declaration of independence. Charles the Settler married Mary Brooke, and between them had about 10 children. He represents the origin of the Carroll line in the new world. so minimally our family directly connects with him
Margaret Carroll, daughter of Charles and Mary. She is buried at St. Anne's Episcopal Church cemetery
John Carroll (left) was the first bishop appointed in the United States.
The lineage of the Carroll's is not consistently noted in ancestry.com; and many lines do not show any notation other than "date of birth." We may never know what our true connection is, as records were not well maintained in early America.
Charles Carroll is regarded as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, in addition to being a delegate representing Maryland. Charles Carroll was the last signer of the Declaration of Independence to die. This last survivor of one of his nation's foundational moment died on 14 November 1832.
Charles Carroll was descended from Irish ancestry. His grandfather, Daniel Carroll, was a native of Littemourna, in Ireland, and was a clerk in the office of Lord Powis, in the reign of James the Second. Under the patronage of Lord Baltimore, the principal proprietor of Maryland, Mr. Carroll emigrated to that Colony toward the close of the seventeenth century, and became the possessor of a large plantation. His son Charles, the father of [Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll], was born in 1702, and lived to the age of eighty years, when he died and left his large estate to his eldest child, Charles, who was then twenty-five years old.
Charles Carroll, the Revolutionary patriot, was born on the twentieth of September, 1737. When he was only eight years of age, his father, who was a Roman Catholic, took him to France, and entered him as a student int he Jesuit College at St. Omer's. There he remained six years, and then went to another Jesuit seminary of learning, at Rheims. After remaining there one year, he entered the College of Louis le Grand, whence he graduated at the age of seventeen years, and then commenced the study of law at Bourges...
Many years after he signed the Declaration of Independence, someone asked him why he added "of Carrollton"? He noted that when he wrote his name, a delegate near him suggested, that as he had a cousin of the name of Charles Carroll, in Maryland, the latter might be taken for him, and he (the signer) escape attainder, or any other punishment that might fall upon the heads of the patriots. Therefore he immediately seized the pen, and wrote "of Carrollton" at the end of his name, exclaiming "They cannot mistake me now!"
In his final years, revered by the Nation as the last surviving signer of the Declaration, Carroll spent most of his time at Doughoregan Manor. But he passed the winters in the home of his youngest daughter and her husband in Baltimore. There, in 1832, he died at the age of 95. His body was interred in the family chapel at Doughoregan Manor.
RELATED FAMILY MEMBERS TO THE CARROLLS
Daniel Carroll later became a member of the first United States Congress (1789-1791). He was also a member of the first Senate of Maryland, where he served up to the time of his death. He was appointed by Washington as one of the first three commissioners of the new federal city that is now known as the District of Columbia. In today's terminology, he would have been considered the mayor of Washington, D.C.
John Carroll (1735-1815), Daniel Carroll's younger brother, was educated in Europe, joined the Jesuit order, and was ordained a priest. He founded a private school for boys and named it after the town where it was located, Georgetown, a port on the Potomac River that later became part of Washington, D.C. He went on to be elected — by all the Catholic priests in America — to become America's first Catholic bishop. He later became archbishop of Baltimore. In any procession of American bishops, the archbishop of Baltimore always goes last in recognition of its role as America's oldest diocese. In 1789, John Carroll founded the college in Georgetown that later became known as Georgetown University.
During a period when the Revolutionary War was going badly, Washington asked John Carroll to join a mission to Canada to seek the support of the French for the colonies. Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton were the others on the four-man mission. While it failed, it established a relationship with the French, much influenced by the Catholic faith they held in common with the Carrolls. It bore fruit years later at Yorktown, where the largely Catholic-financed French fleet cut off supplies to British general Charles Cornwallis, and Washington was able to force Cornwallis to surrender and bring the war to an end.
John Carroll was an intimate of Washington. He wrote a prayer at the time of Washington's inauguration asking God's blessing on the president, Congress, and government of the United States — a prayer still very much in use today. Out of gratitude for John Carroll's support during the war, Washington gave a modified version of the seal of the United States to the institution that is now Georgetown University, and that seal is still in use.