Daniel was born in 1730 at Upper Marlboro, MD. Befitting the son of a wealthy Roman Catholic family, he studied for 6 years (1742-48) under the Jesuits at St. Omer's in Flanders. Then, after a tour of Europe, he sailed home and soon married Eleanor Carroll, apparently a first cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Not much is known about the next two decades of his life except that he backed the War for Independence reluctantly and remained out of the public eye. No doubt he lived the life of a gentleman planter.

Politically he was, in his time, one of the most influential men of his native State, but the wider fame of his illustrious brother has somewhat overshadowed his repute. His early training was like that of the archbishop. "My father", he wrote, 20 Dec., 1762, to his kinsman, James Carroll, in Ireland, "died in 1750 and left six children, myself, Ann, John, Ellen, Mary and Betsey. My eldest sister Ann is married to Mr. Robert Brent in Virginia. They have one child a son. My brother John was sent for his education on my return. Ellen, my second sister, is married well, to Mr. Wm. Brent in Virginia near my eldest sister. She has three boys and one girl. My sisters Mary and Betsy are unmarried and live chiefly with my mother" (Woodstock Letters, VII, 5). An elder brother, Henry, was drowned while a boy at school. Until the Revolution Daniel Carroll led the life of the country gentlemen of the day, but it may be noted that the Catholic men who had been sent abroad to school were far superior, as a class, to their neighbours, whose narrow and insular education rarely led them to interests beyond their county limits. Carroll was an active partisan of the colonists, serving as a member from Maryland of the old Colonial Congress (1780-1784).

In 1781 Carroll entered the political arena. Elected to the Continental Congress that year, he carried to Philadelphia the news that Maryland was at last ready to accede to the Articles of Confederation, to which he soon penned his name. During the decade, he also began a tour in the Maryland senate that was to span his lifetime and helped George Washington promote the Patowmack Company, a scheme to canalize the Potomac River so as to provide a transportation link between the East and the trans-Appalachian West.

Carroll did not arrive at the Constitutional Convention until July 9, but thereafter he attended quite regularly. He spoke about 20 times during the debates and served on the Committee on Postponed Matters. Returning to Maryland after the convention, he campaigned for ratification of the Constitution but was not a delegate to the state convention.

In opposition to the arguments of Samuel Chase, the Anti-Federalist leader in Maryland, he wrote and printed a public letter defending the proposed Constitution, the last sentences of which read: "If there are errors it should be remembered that the seeds of reformation are sown in the work itself and the concurrence of two-thirds of the Congress may at any time introduce alterations and amendments. Regarding it then in every point of view with a candid and disinterested mind I am bold to assert that it is the best form of government which has ever been offered to the world" (Maryland Journal, 16 Oct., 1787). As one of the four laymen representing the Catholics of the United States, his name is signed to the address of congratulation presented to George Washington on his election as President of the Republic under the Constitution.

In the sessions of the new Congress Carroll served again (1789-1791) as a member from Maryland. When the Congress, at the session held in October, 1784, at Trenton, New Jersey, enacted that a board of three commissioners should lay out a site, between two and three miles square, on the Delaware for a federal city, to be the capital of the nation, he was named with Thomas Johnson and David Stuart as his associates. The choice of the present site of Washington was advocated by him, and he owned one of the four farms taken for it, Notley Young, David Burns, and Samuel Davidson being the others interested. The capitol was built on the land transferred to the Government by Carroll, and there is additional interest to Catholics in the fact that, in 1663, this whole section of country belonged to a man named Pope, who called it Rome. On 15 April, 1791, Carroll and David Stuart, as the official commissioners of Congress, laid the corner-stone of the District of Columbia at Jones's Point near Alexandria, Virginia. When the Congress met in Washington for the first time, in November, 1800, Carroll and Notley Young owned the only two really comfortable and imposing houses within the bounds of the city. Young's name is among those assisting as collectors of subscriptions (1787) for the founding of Georgetown College.

In 1789 Carroll won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he voted for locating the Nation's Capital on the banks of the Potomac and for Hamilton's program for the federal assumption of state debts. In 1791 George Washington named his friend Carroll as one of three commissioners to survey and define the District of Columbia, where Carroll owned much land. Ill health caused him to resign this post 4 years later, and the next year at the age of 65 he died at his home near Rock Creek in Forest Glen, MD. He was buried there in St. John's Catholic Cemetery.

Image: Courtesy of The Maryland Historical Society