Published: Fall 2001

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Copyright (c) 2001 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.




Preface.

Descended from the O'Carrolls, a Gaelic Irish sept whose ancestral territory lay principally in what is today the Republic of Ireland's County Offaly, Charles Carroll of Carrollton's grandfather, a man historians have designated Charles Carroll the Settler, was the first Carroll to leave Europe for North America. Arriving in Maryland on October 1, 1688, he brought with him an appointment as attorney general in the colony's proprietary government and a determination to reverse the fate that English rule had imposed upon his Catholic kin. By the time of the Settler's birth in 1661, his father and other close relatives had already lost their lands and much of their wealth to confiscation as a consequence of their participation in the 1641 rebellion. The bitter memory of this and other similar injustices found expression in the Settler's defiant personality and fueled his ambition to prosper and prevail in Maryland, a province known for its official hospitality to Roman Catholics. Indicative both of his remembrance of the past and his designs for the future, the Settler changed the motto on his family's crest from "In fide et in bello forte" ("Strong in faith and war") to "Ubicumque cum libertate" ("Anywhere so long as there be freedom").

The optimism suggested by that alteration proved to be short-lived. Scarcely had Charles Carroll the Settler reached Maryland when the changes wrought by England's Glorious Revolution crossed the Atlantic to cause major problems for Catholics in Lord Baltimore's supposedly tolerant colony. Using the ouster of James II and the subsequent elevation of William and Mary to the English throne as a pretext, Maryland Protestants vented their long-standing jealousy of the proprietor's practice of awarding the most lucrative government posts to Catholics through a "risinge in arms" that transferred the right to govern the province from the proprietary family to the crown. In consolidating their victory, the Associators, as the Protestant rebels were known, began to put in place in the colony the same kinds of legal restrictions that circumscribed the lives of Catholics in England and Ireland, with the result that by 1704 Maryland law forbade Catholics to worship publicly, to give their children a Catholic education, and to hold public office without swearing oaths inimical to the Catholic religion.[1]

Deprived by his allegiance to his faith of his post as attorney general with its promising implications of access to political power, the Settler found other means of acquiring wealth and influence. Twice wed, he advanced himself measurably through both unions, especially the second, which made him the son-in-law of Colonel Henry Darnall I, Maryland's most powerful Catholic and protector of Lord Baltimore's extensive propertied interests.[2] Quickly becoming Darnall's protégé and then his confidante, the Settler made himself so valuable that, upon Darnall's death in 1711, Lord Baltimore transferred to him all that gentleman's offices and responsibilities. Similarly, the Settler began his steady acquisition of land with the 1,381 acres Darnall bestowed upon him as a wedding gift, and at his death in 1720, the 47,777 acres he had accumulated made him the largest landowner in the province.

In addition to his activities as Lord Baltimore's representative and as a planter, the Settler developed extensive mercantile interests, practiced law in those courts that did not require the swearing of the noxious oaths, and began about 1700 to lend money on bonds and mortgages, an undertaking he pursued tenaciously and with such skill that by 1714 he had become the colony's largest lender. The value of the legacy he bequeathed to his heirs attests the full measure of his success: the total worth of his assets, excluding land, amounted to Ï7,535 and constituted the largest personal estate that had ever been probated in Maryland to that time.[3]

Unfortunately for his co-religionists and his descendants, Charles Carroll the Settler's political ambitions failed to reap similar rewards. Following the return of Maryland's government to the newly Protestant proprietary family in 1715, the Settler made a bold attempt to reclaim for Roman Catholics the privileges of officeholding they had enjoyed under the Lords Baltimore prior to 1690. Instead he succeeded only in goading the Protestant power structure into enacting further restrictions, the most onerous being a law depriving Catholics of the right to vote. They would not regain the franchise until the American Revolution.

On July 1, 1720, Charles Carroll the Settler died. Eighteen-year-old Charles, his eldest son and heir, was called home from school in France to assume responsibility for his family's affairs in behalf of his mother, his younger brother Daniel, and his two younger sisters, Mary and Eleanor. By 1742, Charles, then known as Charles Carroll of Annapolis, had buried them all and assumed sole responsibility for the estate the Settler had built. Along with this considerable material inheritance, Charles Carroll of Annapolis also received an important intangible legacy—the memory of the experiences in Ireland and Maryland that spurred his father's quest to establish and make secure his Catholic family and their fortune. As their correspondence reveals, this heritage shaped Charles Carroll of Annapolis and his son, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, in remarkable ways.