R.W.CARROLL & CO., Publishers, Cincinnati, Ohio
March 20th 1883
My dear Cousin
I am reminded that I have not answered your letter of Feby 3rd, rec’d Mch 1st.
Nannie got home without accident, and is full of the very kind reception she had at the hands of the Carrolls of Cork. We are all grateful and hope you may sometime come to America and give us all an opportunity to reciprocate. Nannie is very well and is at present with her aunt Laura Taylor at College Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati.
I am much obliged for “New Ireland” which I am now reading. It interests me very much.
When Annie arrived a great flood in the Ohio river was just subsiding. It washed over all the bottom land in front of our house, rising as high as ten feet above the surface. Many of our neighbours had six feet of water in the living rooms of their houses. All those these overflowed abandoned their homes and were taken into the houses of those on the side hill. We had a family of 23 for two weeks. The care of such a household and the exposure incident to the flood used up my wife- so that she is only now getting about again. The rest of us came up out of the water in good health. The Ohio was never before so high in the memory of civilised man. The flood of 1832, which has been the traditional great flood- was some four feet lower than this. There is a [?] of a flood in 1774 which is believed to have equalled that of 1832 but it was only seen by a few pioneer hunters and the Indians. The first permanent settlement of Ohio was made in 1787 at Marietta. My grandfather came to Ohio in 1801 with his family. This was whilst it was a part of the North West territory, one year before its admission to the union as a state.
I have the original draft of a letter from your father to Isaac English, giving some account of the coming of the family to Ohio and their surroundings which I shall someday copy and send to you. It may interest you.
I am glad to get the tracings of Isaac and Edward Carroll’s names. That of Edward does not correspond with his name in the book because the latter is pointed with the [perm?] a tracing of which I enclose. But, as a blank leafing the book is a memorandum in pencil of the date of birth and death of Ruth, the author, in which the memorandum I find a lower case “d” that almost exactly corresponds the the word Edward as sent by you, fully satisfying me that the same hand wrote both. This Edward Carroll, son of Isaac Carroll, according to a settlement made by my uncle Edward- some fourteen years old when he was brought to this country- was a silk merchant (draper, I believe you say) in Liverpool. I am entirely sure the old book I have belonged to him.
His father was Isaac Carroll who was your grandfather John Carroll’s brother and not his cousin as you have it.
From Uncle Edward’s memorandum I can give you the names of the children of Edward Carroll and Sarah Bell, our great grand-parents as follows: 1st. Thomas- who died at about the age of 21- but after he had become a minister among Friends. 2nd John- who went to Cork and left children Samuel, who died young, Joshua and Thomas. 3rd Edward- who came to America in 1801 and brought a large family. All of his children were born in Ireland except a daughter Ann. 4th William- who married Ellen Morrow and had three daughters. 5th Isaac Carroll, who went to Cork, and had three sons Edward, James and Joseph and possibly two or three daughters. 6th Elizabeth- who married Jared Davis and had children, Thomas, John and Deborah. 7th Isabella- who married Robert Williams- no children 8th Deborah- who married Wm English and had children Thomas, John Isaac Wm, Isaac, Lucy, Belle, Deborah and Abby. 9th Sarah- who married Richard bell and had children Isaac, Richard, Edward, Fanny, Dorcas and Deborah. 10th Nancy- who married Same Johnston, and had children, John, Wm, Saul? Ann, Sarah, Lucy and Deborah.
So you see the family was reasonably prolific. The children of my grandfather were Joseph (who left a large family, mostly extinct); John (who died in Brazil, SA leaving a widow- a Portuguese woman and no children) Edward (who left only one daughter, Mary A Bewley, surviving him; Thomas, my father; Deborah married to Wm B Randolph); Marjory, married to WmWhinnery; Sarah, married to Das[James] Whinnery; Eliza, who died unmarried; Ann, who married Abel Thomas. One of the Whinnery Aunts had 14 children and the other 12.
You affectionate cousin
Robt.W Carroll
Carroll Family History 