On September 19, 1737, Charles Carroll of Carrollton—statesman, patriot, and the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence—was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Born into one of colonial Maryland’s wealthiest Catholic families, Carroll received an unusually extensive education in Europe, including study in France and England. Because Maryland’s laws long restricted Catholics’ political participation, he first emerged as a public voice through influential anonymous newspaper essays defending the rights of colonial Americans.
As tensions with Great Britain intensified, Carroll became an important advocate for the revolutionary cause in Maryland. In early 1776, he joined Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase on the Continental Congress’s mission to Canada. That July, Maryland appointed him a delegate to the Continental Congress; he arrived in Philadelphia too late to vote on independence, but signed the engrossed Declaration on August 2, declaring his willingness to “defend the liberties of my country, or die with them.”
Tradition holds that Carroll added “of Carrollton” to his name because his wealth and prominence made his commitment to independence unmistakable. Whether or not that motive can be proved, his signature represented a considerable personal risk. He went on to serve Maryland and the new nation in public office, including as one of Maryland’s first U.S. senators.
Carroll outlived every other signer of the Declaration. After Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4, 1826, he became its last surviving signatory; he died in 1832 at age 95. On July 4, 1828, he laid the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a fitting final public appearance for a man whose life spanned the Revolution and the beginnings of a new industrial age.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
