The Charles Carroll of Carrollton Family Papers

FAIN: RQ-50085-04

College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA 23186-0002)
Ronald Hoffman (Project Director: November 2003 to April 2008)

Work on the final three volumes of a six-volume edition of the papers of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

The editors will select and edit for publication the manuscripts to be presented in Volumes IV-VI of the Papers of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the last of the signers to die. Volumes I-III of the Carroll Papers, published in 2001, under the title Dear Papa, Dear Charley, covered the initial forty-five years of Charles Carrollton of Carrollton's life. The concluding three volumes, "A Patriarch in the Early Republic," span the remaining fifty years, to Carroll's death on November 14, 1832, and are planned for publication by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in 2011. Like the materials contained in Dear Papa, Dear Charley, the documents to be included in "A Patriarch in the Early Republic" offer a rare opportunity to perceive the religious, economic, social, and political development of the early Republic from the perspective of one of its creators. The sheer sweep of time encompassed by Carroll's correspondence, from the late colonial period through the Revolutionary and Confederation eras and the first four decades of the United States, together with the manuscripts' characteristic, deeply human intimacy, allow us to examine events and people during the nation's formative period through an unusually complex, multi-faceted lens. The grant requested of the National Endowment for the Humanities is for salaries and employee benefits.