n his
descendants. He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.

His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or "Breakneck Carroll" (so called
because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the
Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist
Order.

The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, "the Signer," builder of the manor house at
Doughoregan--which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of
the old Irish words _dough_, meaning "house" or "court," and _O'Ragan_,
meaning "of the King"; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight
brogue, "Doo-ray-gan," the accent falling on the middle syllable--this
Charles Carroll, "the Signer," most famous of his line, was
"Breakneck's" only son. When eight years old he was sent to France to be
educated by the Jesuits. He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at
Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he
studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went
to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law
until his return to Maryland in 1765.

Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a
basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to
be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman
Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support
of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or
churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms--the
bearing of arms having been "at that time the insignia of social
position and gentle breeding."

Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton,
already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John
Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all
States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant
of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this
land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the
Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.

The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American
colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and
the seeds of revolution were begi