Carroll, John

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.