CARROLL, JOHN: First Roman Catholic bishop in the United States; b. at Upper Marlborough, Prince George's County, Md., Jan. 8, 1735; d. in Baltimore Dec. 3, 1815. He studied with the Jesuits at Bohemia, on the east shore of Maryland, and at the College of St. Omer, France; joined the Jesuits in 1753; was ordained priest is 1759; taught at St. Omer, Liége, and Bruges; traveled through Europe as tutor to the son of a Roman Catholic nobleman; returned to America in 1774 and became missionary and priest of his native region with headquarters at his mother's residence at Rock Creek, not far from Washington. Like his kinsman Charles Carroll of Carrollton, he warmly supported the cause of the colonies in the Revolutionary war. When the Roman Catholic Church in the United States was organized as a distinct body, free from the authority of the vicar apostolic of London, he was made prefect apostolic in 1784; in 1789 he was chosen bishop of Baltimore and consecrated in England in 1790; in 1808 he became archbishop. He founded Georgetown College in 1791.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: John G. Shea gives Carroll's Life and Times in History of the Catholic Church in the U. S., vol. ii., New York, 1888.

CARROLL, JOHN JOSEPH: American Roman Catholic; b. at Enniscrone, County Sligo, Ireland, June 24, 1856. He was educated at St. Michael's College, Toronto (B.A., 1876), and St. Joseph's Provincial Theological Seminary, Troy, N. Y., from which he was graduated in 1879. In the following year he was ordained priest, and was appointed assistant rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Name, Chicago, and since 1887 has been rector of St. Thomas Church in the same city. In 1898 he was elected chairman of Gaelic history in the Gaelic League of America, and in 1902 was chosen national librarian of the same organization. He has written: Notes and Observations on the Aryan Race and Tongue (Chicago, 1900); Tale of the Wanderings of the Red Lance (1902); and Prechristian Occupation of Ireland by the Gaelic Aryans (2 vols., 1903-06).

CARSON, ALEXANDER: Irish Baptist; b. at Annahone, near Stewartstown (30 m. w. of Belfast), County Tyrone, Ireland, 1776; d. at Belfast Aug. 24, 1844. He studied at Glasgow and was ordained a Presbyterian minister at Tobermore, near Coleraine, County Londonderry, 1798. After a few years he left the Presbyterians and published as justification of his action Reasons for Separating from the General Synod of Ulster (Edinburgh, 1804); a portion of his congregation followed him, and for ten years he preached in barns or the open air. A stone church was built for him in 1814. In the early part of his independent career, while studying the New Testament in order to confute the Baptists, he became a Baptist himself, and thenceforth advocated their views with the exception of close communion. His Baptism in Its Mode and Subjects Considered (Edinburgh, 1831; enlarged ed., 1844) is a Baptist classic. His other writings were numerous and treat topics of Bible interpretation, philosophy, doctrinal and practical theology, and the like. He was a bitter controversialist. His collected works were published in six volumes at Dublin, 1847-64.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. C. Moore, Life of Alexander Carson, New York, 1851; John Douglas, A Biographical Sketch of . . . A. Carson, London, 1884; DNB, ix. 186.