The only grandson of the famed Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the sole Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the fifth Charles Carroll, attached Doughregan, his Baltimore manor house, to his name, to distinguish himself from his forbears. He lived a rich life (in every sense of the word), as revealed in this letter to a French nobleman he and his family had befriended when the Count, a longtime American resident, was French charge d’affaires in Washington, taking the place of a drunken, boorish, belligerent ambassador who was “despised” by President Monroe. Count Menon, on the other hand, “took a warm and lively interest in everything that related to the prosperity and progress of American institutions, and cherished the feeling of an adopted son towards the State of Maryland”.  He and Carroll were close friends and the American had visited him in Paris not long before writing this letter – which explains why Carroll writes to advise Menon not to incur the expense of shipping his carriage back to the United States  One result of that trip was the Carroll had acquired a French chef, a Monsieur Legrane, who had found life in Baltimore lonely but now beginning to feel “more at home in America”,  and “having “habituated himself to our fare” (such as canvasback ducks and soft crabs) proposed to leave the Carroll household to set up for himself as a pastry chef and caterer. Carroll did not regret his departure as Legrane used so much charcoal that he might have produced “powder enough for a line of battleships.” At least, Legrane’s sophisticated taste in cooking appliances had convinced Carroll that his servants, who had made dinners at the Manor house before Legrane, had been suffering too long “with miserable tin pans.”

      The Manor house Doughregan, was a colonial mansion on a 20,000 acre plantation and estate, 10 miles west of the city of Baltimore. It had been home to Carroll’s grandfather, though his descendant found it more convenient to live in the city, giving management of the estate, as he wrote Menon, to one of his seven sons. Which included the charitable offering of several hundred acres to a Catholic charity for the indigent. Of the other children he mentions in the letter, one of the boys was a student at Georgetown College, and his youngest daughter, the ”handsomest girl of the three”,  was at Mt. de Sales Academy – both upper class Catholic schools.

     Carroll was, of course, among the more distinguished of American Catholics.  He told Menon that he had just had a visit from the Archbishop of Baltimore, who was to consecrate a newly-completed Altar for the private chapel at his Manor house, designed in  Rome by  American sculptor Edward Sheffield Bartholomew. The work was “classic and beautiful” and had “added much” to Bartholomew’s reputation.  Carroll had also commissioned a German artist in Baltimore to make 10 stained glass windows for the Chapel, each 16 feet high, and all “very well done”.

      On another artistic vein, Carroll asks Menon to “give my best regards” to “our excellent friends” Mrs. Tifanny and her brother, who were then visiting Europe.  Whether this was the wife of the Tiffany of New York is uncertain, but the famous store had indeed opened a Paris branch a few years earlier.

Having, “with apparent egotism dwelt upon matters concerning me so closely”, Menon ended by urging Menon to sail back across the Atlantic to again visit America.  “Let not the fate of the Arctic deter you”, he urged, this a reference to the recent disaster of the American steamship Arctic which, en route to America, had collided with a French vessel off the coast of Newfoundland.  Only 88 of the 400 aboard had survived, mostly members of the crew; all of the women and children passengers had perished.  Carroll did not apparently succeed in his urgings; both men would die during the American Civil War and it’s likely that they never saw each other again.

Finally, Carroll writes his only political comment, speaking sadly of “these Know Nothing times”, though concluding that the anti-Catholic Know Nothings would be “nothing in a year from this”, their movement suffering from “decay”.  It was not a good prediction.  Politically, the Know Nothings, who had formed their own “American” political party, would peter out before the onset of the Civil War. But Carroll would yet live to see Baltimore torn by violence during the election of 1856, three separate riots following clashes between nativists and the growing population of foreign immigrants.