CARROLL, Charles of Carrollton [Signer of the Declaration of Independence] An important late letter from Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic Signer of the American Declaration of Independence and, by 1822, the last surviving Signer, a national symbol of the Revolutionary generation.

Three pages quarto, with integral address leaf; docketing and calculations. Dated, 15 April 1822. Written in a neat, flowing forward-slanting hand, attractively mounted. In very good condition.

Autograph Letter Signed to Mr. William Gibbons, an estate manager, discussing accounts, repairs, wheat threshing machinery, labour, and health at the manor.

Written from Carrollton Manor, the Carroll family estate (17,000 acres), the letter provides an unusually detailed view into the management of the vast Carroll holdings. Carroll discusses estate accounts “Rightly should be credited with 9 days more … I have credited his account.” Problems with the crops “I am glad to hear the crops of wheat and rye are so much improved since the moist mild weather. When does Mr. Dean think he will [be] finishing threshing wheat? I suppose he will soon finish, as Clem tells me there are not more than 3 stacks of wheat remaining to be threshed.” Illness among his workers; “I am happy to know all are well at the Manor, except two of my people & they not being dangerously ill, I hope will soon recover.” The practical, precise tone reflects Carroll’s lifelong attention to estate affairs and the sophisticated agricultural operation he oversaw, one of the largest in Maryland.
Letters of Carroll of Carrollton are increasingly scarce, particularly those with substantial content rather than short formal notes. His manuscripts are held principally at the Maryland Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Carroll Papers project at Johns Hopkins University. Private-market examples of this length and richness are now seldom encountered.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), scion of the prominent Carroll family of Maryland, was the sole Catholic Signer of the Declaration of Independence and, after 1826, became the last surviving Signer, celebrated as a living legend of the American Revolution. Unusually well educated at St Omer, the Collège Louis-le-Grand, and the Inner Temple, Carroll combined political conviction with immense landed wealth. His 17,00 acre estate remained one of the largest and best-managed plantations in the America, and his surviving correspondence displays a meticulous concern for accounts, agriculture, and estate modernisation. Carroll’s long life saw him become a symbolic link between the Founding era and the Jacksonian age; his late letters, such as the present example, are prized not only for their autograph but for the insight they provide into the economic and social world of early Republican Maryland.
Charles Carroll was descended from the Ó Cearbhaill lords of Éile (Lords of Ely) in King’s County (now County Offaly), Ireland. Carroll’s grandfather was the Irish-born Charles Carroll the Settler (1660-1720) from Litterluna; he was a descendant of Daniel O’Carroll of Aghagurty Clareen, three miles south of Kinnitty, and a clerk in the office of Lord Powis. Carroll left his native Ireland around the year 1659, and emigrated to St. Mary’s City, capital of the colony of Maryland, in 1689, with a commission as Attorney General from the colony’s Catholic proprietor, Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore.
This rich and unusually substantial letter offers a vivid window into Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s daily world as a major landowner in the final decade of his life.