Edward Carroll, a member of the Presbyterian church in Moira, Co.Antrim was married to Elizabeth Murray. They left Ireland for America landing in New York. They then sailed to Philadelphia landing there on 21st May 1801. They first settled in East Liverpool.[broken link]
Oct 12th 1878
My dear Sir
I received your kind letter touching my sister Laura’s call on you , and now my young brother-in-law, Courtney Piatt, has returned, bringing with him your photograph and a lively remembrance of your polite attentions to him. I am delighted to see a picture of you, and hope that you will at your convenience, favour me with a copy, as well as with photographs of other members of your family. It is pleasant to know that one has such good looking relations in the old country, and to renew the friendly intercourse which doubtless existed among our for fathers. I shall take pleasure in sending you photographs of other members of the family when I get good ones.
I must especially thank you for your particularly kind attention to Courtney. You took much greater trouble than I expected, and Courtney was greatly pleased. It was a good lesson in politeness to a young man, which will be of benefit to him through life. I believe you people of the old world give more time to the amenities of life than we of the new, who live faster in some ways and do not surrender so much time to social intercourse. Though to matters of genuine good feeling I am not disposed to yield the palm. My sister writes as if she enjoyed her short visit to you to the uttermost, and only regretted it was so brief. I hope before she returns home she may see you again.
It is evident from her accounts that the Cork branch of the Carroll family knew but little about the Americans- which is perfectly natural. In some respects, I believe you do not know as much about our ancestors as we, though we know nothing except by tradition. My grandfather, Edward Carroll, was younger than your grandfather, John Carroll. Your grandfather, left the North a good many years before my grandfather emigrated to this country. The latter came hither in 1801, bringing with him a large family. He had only one child born after he came to this country- a daughter.
His eldest son was named John. He was a man at the time of emigration, and I always understood had partly educated at Cork with his uncles, John and Isaac Carroll. He accompanied my grandfather to the West, and, after the family got settled, he entered upon a mercantile and trading career, which was eventful and romantic. I am not by any means fully advised of its details. But he was connected more or less with Abraham Bell, of New York, a cousin of my and your grandfathers- he was in partnership at Charleston, South Carolina, with his own cousin, John Davis- he went to Spain and France as [supercargo], and ended by getting into the Commissary Department of Bonaparte’s army- he was with that army on the Russian campaign , and after the burning of Moscow and the destruction of the army, drifted into Holland, where he worked in a Chandler’s factory until he got enough money to bring him back to this country. He afterwards went to South America, engaging in Commercial pursuits at a place called San Pedro, in the Rio Grande of the state of Brazil. There he married a Portuguese lady, and resided til his death, which occurred about 1838 when he was probably 58 years old. He was a successful and respected merchant. He left no children, and I believe his widow is still alive. He lived at different times in France, Spain and Italy, and understood the respective languages of these countries. I have only one letter of his in my possession. It was written in 1821, from San Pedro, to my father, who was then a young physician, just embarking on his professional career. It is very well written, and full of kindly advice to his younger brother.
The next older brother was Joseph Carroll, a mild mannered and kindly man, who followed the occupation of a farmer during his life, and died some twenty years ago, leaving a pretty large family, of whom I know but little. One son, also Joseph, resides but sixty miles from here on a farm, and him I see now and then. I think his other sons are all dead, leaving but few children- though one son left a son, named Moreau, who went through our Civil War as a soldier and now resides in the state of Iowa, where I am told he maintains a good position, having been honoured with the office of Auditor of one of the counties.
Another son of my grandfather was named Edward. He was some twelve or fourteen years old at the time of the emigration, and always retained something of the Irish accent. He grew to be a large and powerful man, quite celebrated throughout the region for his prowess albeit he was a “Friend”. He resided nearly all his life in Columbiana county of this state, in which grandfather settled. He was something of a politician and at various times held the office of Magistrate, Auditor, Treasurer and Commissioner in his county. He finally came to Cincinnati when well advanced in life, and thence went to Philadelphia, where he died. He had only two children who lived to be adults- one son, now dead without issue- the other daughter, Mary, married a Mr George Bewley, an Irishman of a Dublin family of “Friends”, and now resides in this city, having only two surviving children Anna and Mary, both adults.
My grandfather had five daughters I think- One married Wm Whinery, is now dead, leaving several children. I think her name was Margery- Another named Sallie married James Whinery, is now dead, leaving several children, one of whom is a dentist of Salem, Columbiana county, Ohio, named John Carroll Whinery, a man of reputation and standing in his profession0- another named Deborah married Bayless Randolph, is now dead, leaving two children- another, the youngest child, named Anne, born in this country, married Abel Thomas, and is still living, but I do not know exactly where- and another Eliza, died unmarried. The last is said to have possessed an uncommonly lovely disposition. Personally I knew nothing about any of them, having resided in a different portion of the state.
My grandfather had one son Isaac, who died almost as an infant, soon after arrival in this country and before the family came to the west. This tedious detail leaves my father Thomas, unaccounted for. He was the youngest son, except Isaac, born in 1794 in Co Antrim. When grandfather came to Ohio in the year 1801 it was not yet admitted as a State to the Union. It was part of what was known as the North Western Territory- a region which embraced the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, extending over a territory probably twice as large as Great Britain. Ohio became a state in 1802, so that our family were genuine pioneers. Grandfather settled in Columbiana county, on the Ohio river in the North eastern portion of the state, when the county was a wilderness of almost unbroken forest. He bought a farm and began the terrible task of clearing and cultivating it, and of maintaining his family. It was a hard life of toil and deprivation removed from even the ordinary comforts of civilisation. My grandfather was of a mercurial nature, almost [ ] jolly in his temper, as I have been told. He was calculated to adapt himself to circumstances and make the best of them, enjoying life under almost any condition. My grandmother was grave an saturnine in disposition, dignified in deportment and not quite content with the adverse fate which had made a pioneer of her. She had a great deal to say of her surroundings in Ireland and many regrets. She it was who preserved and communicated what traditions of the Carrolls there were. She took the position in her meetings as a “weighty” Friend and sat among the Elders. My father seemed to have inherited traits from both parents. He had the cheerfulness of his father without having jolly and much of the thoughtfulness of his mother. He was brought up amid the solitude of the deepwoods, inured to the hardships of clearing and farming a wilderness, deprived of any of the luxuries and many of the necessities of civilisation and almost without the benefits of schools. Still he determined to become educated if possible. He had the benefit of some teaching in such four schools as were established during the winter months. He followed it up with application to such few books as it was possible to get hold of- devoting winter evenings to reading by the light of a wood fire, and only studying while his horses rested during the ploughing season. This was a slow way to learn, but what was acquired under such difficulties was retained. He persevered, and finally saved enough money to enable him to take a course of study in the profession of medicine. He began to practice his profession at Richmond, in the state of Indiana, about the year of 1820. The next year he married my mother, Anne Lynch Williams. a Friend, who had been born in the state of Virginia and mainly brought up in the state of North Carolina. They resided at Richmond only a year or two longer, when father’s health broke down, and he removed back to Columbiana county, Ohio. There my brother Foster was born in the year 1823. The father went to St.Clarisville, Belmont county, Ohio, where I and my sister, Laura (MM Mrs Taylor) were born. This constituted the whole family.
Father remained at St.Clairsville doing a large [business] until 1841, when he got rid of the hardships of a country practice, he removed to Cincinnati where he resided thirty years until his death in the spring of 1871, achieving a high reputation as a physician. In his earlier life he attended lectures in the Transylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky, where he took his degree of MD. He afterwards spent a winter at lectures in New York and Philadelphia. Throughout his life he was a student, and he became a man of extensive achievements both in and out of his profession. He was cheerful, kindly hospitable man, full of benevolence and courage, and possessed of more than ordinary intellectual force. He was about six feet high, of a spare frame, ordinarily weighing about 160 pounds. His hair was black- his eyes a mixture of gray and hazel ( a dark gray)- his nose roman- his forehead large. He was a little stooped about the neck and shoulders. My brother Foster also studied medicine and entered upon the practice with high hopes and brilliant prospects. He had scarce begun when he died in the 28th year of his age, leaving a young widow who bore him a daughter a few months after his death. This daughter, Anna Foster Carroll, lost her mother a few months ago and is now an orphan indeed. She will in future live with me or sister Laura, probably. She is a very accomplished musician, as well as an interesting a bright young lady. My sister Laura has been married twice, and has four children by her first husband- three of whom you have seen. The other, Frank, is a graduate of two colleges “Haverford” and “Harvard”, and a man of fine promise. Laura probably told you of my family, and Courtney left you photographs of my wife and oldest son. The family consists of Eugene- 17 years old last April- now a cadet Midshipman in the US navy, being educated at the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. Laura- 16 years old in August, attending Hughes High School in Cincinnati- Robert De Valcourt, 14 years old in August, attending the Intermediate School in the City- Louis, 12 years old in August, attending our neighbourhood school, and Mary Arabella, 10 years old in June, attending the same school with Louis. We consider them all very good and bright children, and look forward to their careers with hope and confidence.
Sister Laura resides about six miles north east of Cincinnati, and I, on the Ohio river, about 4 miles west of the city. Mr Taylor and I have our respective offices in the city, which is a common meeting ground for us.
My wife’s maiden name was Mary Arabella Piatt. her grandfather and great grandfather were pioneers of the portion of the state of Kentucky near this city. Her father was a lawyer of some considerable eminence, who died about twenty years ago. Her mother’s maiden name was De Falcourt, her parents being French and she a native of Baltimore. As I combine in my veins Irish, English Scotch and Welsh blood, you can see that my children are a regular conglomerate of nationalities.
To go back- there came over from Ireland, about the time of the immigration of my grandfather, and from the same neighbourhood, Leonard Dobbin and his wife, Elizabeth who first settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and afterwards lived at Wheeling, Virginia, a place on the Ohio river about 10 miles east of St. Clairsville, my birthplace. Mrs Dobbin’s maiden name was Elizabeth Carroll, and she was either a first or second cousin of my grandfather. The families had been neighbours and friends in Ireland, and the friendly intercourse was kept up. When I was a boy, grandmother Dobbin, as I called her, was a very old woman. She talked a great deal of Ireland and specially of the Carrolls. I was young, and made no items, but the accounts as I recollect them as to the history of the family, agreed with the traditions which I received from my father and from Uncle Edward and from cousin John C Whinery (who passed some of his boyhood at Grandfather’s place) and which cousin Mary C Bewley received from Aunt Sallie and Margery Whinery and from her father. Grandmother Dobbin’s memory went back to almost 1770. She often told about watching John Paul Jones’ vessel, during our war with England for independence off the coast of Ireland, at the time there was a panic lest that celebrated officer should make a landing.
Now the tradition, agreed upon on all hands, was that Colonel O’Carroll, who commanded a cavalry regiment in the army of King James ll. , at the battle of the Boyne, in 1690, was killed; that he left two sons, boys of tender years; that these two sons were sent to the North to be brought up; that one of them was taken by a Presbyterian and the other by an Episcopalian, and brought up in their family, the one as an Episcopalian the other as Presbyterian; that the Presbyterian was our ancestor and the Episcopalian the ancestor of Mrs Dobbin. The tradition further is that the name of the family was O’Carroll, the O being dropped by these boys, thus educated as Protestants, and that the Colonel killed at, or about that time of, the battle of the Boyne, was a Catholic. Further, the tradition is that the family came from kings County.
This tradition has some confirmation in these facts: There was a Colonel O’Carroll in King James’ army- who was killed about the period of the battle of the Boyne. The greater portion of the Irish gentry who took an active part against the Prince of Orange were scattered and driven out of the country. Many of them going to France, while their property was confiscated and their families dispersed. The Carrolls of Maryland, in this country came of that Catholic stock and from Kings county. Your and my great-grandfather, Edward Carroll was a Presbyterian- he married Sarah Bell, an English Friend -as your grandfather was born in 1739, it is safe to assume that his father, the said Edward Carroll was born as early as 1712, which takes him back to within 22 years of the battle of the Boyne, so that his father might well have been one of the boys alluded to. This does not leave any great stretch of time or many people to be covered by the tradition. I got it through several sources, from my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather was born about 1750, his father about- say- 1712- and his grandfather might very easily seen and talked with his grandfather, born say, in 1680, and have got the account directly from him. But that was not necessary to the authenticity of the tradition. If my grandfather got it from his father, his father doubtless got it from his progenitor, and that would easily carry it back to the very time spoken of, and to the events connected with the dispersal of the families and the division of the property of the officers of King James’ army. Our great grandfather, Edward Carroll, who married Sarah bell, a Quaker, joined the Society of Friends, and his family were brought up in that denomination. My grandfather came to the wilderness of Ohio- a Friend himself and all his family. They were cut off from their old country relatives- they had no access to Irish history- they were a simple minded plain people, who would not through ostentation or vanity invent such a story. They therefore had a genuine family tradition, confirmed by that of Mrs Elizabeth Dobbin, a cousin, from the same neighbourhood, who was full of family anecdotes, and who was herself only two removes from the original stock. Of course there may be nothing in this; and it is, at best, more curious than important; but it is probably worth telling to you, as from sister Laura’s letter, I infer that you have no similar tradition. I can hardly account for the fact that you have not, unless it be that your grandfather left the family roof early in life. However, I give you our understanding of the matter for what it is worth. I have in my possession Keating’s History of Ireland, translated by Desmond O’Connor and issued at Dublin in 1809. This edition gives the names of the subscribers to the work when first published in 1723. . I have at my office (Iam writing at home) a statement of the names of my granfather’s brothers and sisters and some account of whom the sisters married, furnished me by cousin Mary Bewley from a statement made ten years ago by Uncle Edward. Of the brothers I remember John, Isaac, William and Thomas. Thomas was a minister of some promise among Friends. My father and yours were doubtless named for him. One of the sisters was mother of Isaac English of Dublin- another married a man named Bell- another a man named Davis, whose son, John Davis, was in partnership at Charleston, South Carolina, with my uncle John Carroll, an account of whom I gave you above. I suppose if one had the disposition, that we might trace the families back some distance through the records of the Society of friends and of the Presbyterian church in that part of the country Antrim whence we come; and it is barely possible there may be some official record of the families broken up and dispersed after the battle of the Boyne in 1690, the battle of Aughrim in 1691, and the surrender of Limerick in 1692. For years after this period, as you are aware, the Catholics were persecuted and disposed and their property confiscated following out the policy inaugurated by Cromwell some fifty years before. It is more than likely that but little public account was taken of private families- so that we can only fall back on family tradition and the facts of history which indicate its probable truth.
I enclose photographs of my father and mother. They are not very good as photographs, but very good as likenesses. Father’s is copied from an old one. Such as they are, they are the most satisfactory we have.
My brother Foster was named for Wm Forster an English Friend of eminence who visited the country over fifty years ago and staid at my grandfather William’s house, at Richmond Indiana some time, and who was on intimate terms with my father, Foster, as he grew up, dropped the Wm from his name and left off an r in spelling it, so that it lost its identity.
I hope you will pardon this very long letter and bear up under its reading. I got started and hardly knew where to stop. A good deal of it will, doubtless, be uninteresting, but I will let it all go for what its worth.
By the way, a John Watson visited here, being on business, some twenty years or so ago, and said he was a relative. I never knew what relation he was. He came from Dublin, and was an original character. And, also, some twenty years ago I new [sic] a Mr Atkins, who came to Cincinnati from Montreal Canada. He said his father had been a correspondence of Thos & Joshua Carroll in a business way, and that he, when a boy, had been sent to Cork to school and knew all the Carrolls of that place. He must have been about your age- possibly a few years younger.
Please present me kindly to your family, and believe me,
Very truly
Your affectionate cousin
Robt.W.Carroll
To: Joseph H Carroll, Esq
Cork, Ireland.
There was a Joseph F Carroll who resided at Pottsville, Penn and , I believe, is now dead. I think he must have been a son of Isaac Carroll. He had one daughter, who married a Presbyterian clergyman. I never happened to see any of them, but they visited my father’s house.
[Transcription of the original letter held by David O’Carroll in Leeds, England in April 1997. Words which cannot be deciphered are in square brackets]
Carroll Family History 