Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/150

 CARROLL.

CARROLL.

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at a grammar school established at Bohemia, where he had as classiuates, his cousin Ciiu.ies Carroll of Carrollton, and his relative, Rol,cii Brent, and tinished at the Jesuit college of

St. Omer in Freneu Flanders, where he remained six years. In 1758 he began liis novitiate in the So- ciety of Jesus, and in 1755 entered the theological seminary at Lifege. In 1761 he was ordained to the priesthood, and renounced his share of the family prop- erty in favor of his brothers and sLsters. For some time he was employed as a professor at St. Omer and at Lifege, and in 1771 was re- ceived as a professed father in the society of Jesus. For two years he was employed as a tutor, and in 1773 was appointed prefect at Bruges, where the Jesuit fathers, driven from St. Omer by the parliament of Paris, had removed their college. In 1773 the Society of Jesus was suppressed by the brief of Pope Clement XIV., and Father Carroll retired to England, where he held the post of chaplain to the Earl of Arundel at Wardour castle. In 1774 he returned to Mary- land and devoted himself to missionary duty in that state and in Virginia. In 1776 he accom- panied Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles CarroU to Montreal in order that he might endeavor to obtain the support of the Canadian clergy to the patriot cause. The mis- sion proved fruitless and, Ds. Franklin falling ill, Father Carroll devoted himself to caring for him. and thus formed a friendship which was cherished through life. He continued his mis- sionary work during the revolutionary war, and did good service to the cause of the colonists by means of his correspondence with friends in Europe regarding the events of the war. In 1784 he was appointed by the state of Maryland one of the commissioners to establish St. John's college at Annapolis, which institution was opened in 1789. and which afterwards conferred upon him the degree of LL.D. He was appointed superior of the clergy of the United States in 1784, and made his first visitation in 1785, which included Maryland, Pennsylvania, the Jerseys, and New York, and for five years promoted in that capacity the growth and welfare of the Ameri- can church. On Nov. 6, 1789, the holy see issued a papal bull appointing Father Carroll the first

bishop of the Tuited States, and selected the city oi Baltuiiuie as his episcoptii see. He re- ceived consecration Aug. 15, 1790, at the hands of Rt. Rev. Charles Walmesley, vicar-apostolic of London, in the chapel of Lvdworth castle, Eng- land. Returning to the United States, he reached Baltimore, Dec. 7, 1790. He had established the college at Georgetown in 1788, the buildings were erected in 1789, the first classes held in 1791, and in 1815 it was raised to the rank of a university-. In 1790 the first Carmelite convent was established in Charles county, Md., and the Visitation nuns founded then- first house at Georgetown. The rigors of the French revolution drove from France to America numbers of her clergy, and Bishop Carroll's diocese was enriched by a colony of Sulpitians and one of the Domini- can priests. The Society of Jesus was restored by liim. and the Jesuits were placed in charge of Georgetown college and of their former missions in Maryland and Pennsylvania. On Feb. 22, 1800, Bi.-;hop Carroll, at the unanimous request of Congress and the Protestant clergy, delivered the paneg^Tic on Washington in the national capitol. In 1803 he visited Boston and conse- crated the Church of the Holy Cross, the first R. C. church erected in that city, and in 1806 he laid the corner-stone of the cathedral at Balti- more. In 1809 he encouraged Elizabeth Ann Seton, who had established a school for girls in Baltimore, to found at Emmittsburg, Md., in 1809, a commmiity called " Sisters of St. Joseph," wliich in 1811 adopted the rules and constitu- • tion of the order of St. Vincent de Paul, with some modifications, the community becoming the religious order known as the Sisters of Charity. Pope Pius VII. erected Baltimore into an archiepiscopal see April 8, 1808, and estab- lished four suffragan sees, — Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, Ky. Owing to the imprisonment and death of Bishop Concan- non, who had been consecrated bishop of New York in Rome, the pallium of the archbishop and the bull conferring his office, which had been placed in his keeping to convey to the United States, did not arrive until 1810, when the new archbishop in the cathedral at Baltimore conse- crated Bishops Egan, Flaget and Cheveras. The learned prelate wrote and published uaany contro- versial pamphlets and addresses, the chief of which are: An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America, A Concise view of the Principal Points of Controversy be- tween the Protestant and Roman Churches; A Revieio of the Important Controversy between Dr. Carroll and the Rev. Messrs. Wlia7-to7i and Haickins, and A Discourse on General Washing- ton. Archbishop Carroll died in Baltimore, Md., Dec. 3, 1815.