5400 Roland Ave, Baltimore, MD 21210, United States
Carroll was educated at St. Mary's College (present-day St. Mary's Seminary and University) in Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1830s.
5400 Roland Ave, Baltimore, MD 21210, United States
Carroll was educated at St. Mary's College (present-day St. Mary's Seminary and University) in Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1830s.
congressman judge lawyer politician
David Caroll was born on March 11, 1816 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was the eldest child of William Carroll and Henrietta Maria Williamson. His great-grandfather Daniel Carroll participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, being one of the three members of the Maryland delegation to sign the document.
Carroll was educated at St. Mary's College (present-day St. Mary's Seminary and University) in Baltimore, Maryland in the mid-1830s and moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in 1836.
Carroll returned to Arkansas sometime in the early 1840s, settling in Little Rock (Pulaski County). Andrew Byrne, the first Catholic bishop for the Diocese of Little Rock, resided at Carroll's home in the Arkansas capital before the first St. Andrew's Cathedral and Rectory were completed in 1846. That year, President Polk appointed Carroll deputy clerk for the United States District Court in Little Rock. Two years later, Carroll was admitted to the Arkansas bar. In 1850, Carroll ran successfully for the Arkansas House of Representatives. By 1860, Carroll had relocated to Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) to serve as a prosecuting attorney for the district that covered southeastern Arkansas.
With the onset of the Civil War, Carroll resigned his position as prosecuting attorney in the spring of 1862 to organize Confederate volunteers, who soon joined the Eighteenth Arkansas Infantry. He was stationed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and Corinth, Mississippi; at the latter post, the Arkansans contracted yellow fever and left the military in August 1862, and Carroll returned to Pine Bluff.
A unicameral Provisional Congress initially wrote the Confederate Constitution and selected its president and vice president in early 1861. In November, voters elected Jefferson Davis to a six-year term as president. They also elected members to a Congress composed of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Each state was granted, two senators. Arkansas had four Confederate congressional districts, one for each quadrant of the state. Another election in November 1863 elected the second and final Confederate Congress.
In September 1864, Confederate senator Charles B. Mitchel died, and the legislature elevated Third District representative Augustus H. Garland to the upper house. His district covered Little Rock and southeastern Arkansas. By late 1864, however, Federal forces had overrun the northern two-thirds of the state, including the capital city of Little Rock. As reported in the Washington (Hempstead County) Telegraph on December 7, 1864, Carroll won a special election to the vacant seat. By this time, traveling to the Confederate capital was not easy, as the Union had control of the Mississippi River. Carroll made it to the Confederate House of Representatives on January 11, 1865, yet that body would exist for only two more months. Carroll was one of three Arkansans who were still at their desks when the Confederate Congress adjourned forever on March 18, 1865.
After the war, Carroll was chosen as a probate judge for Jefferson County in 1866, but he was removed by the Republican government two years later. In 1878, Carroll was named state chancery circuit judge, a position he held until he retired in 1890.
David Williamson Carroll was one of the eleven men who represented Arkansas in the Confederate Congress. He is known as the first Roman Catholic to represent Arkansas in a national legislative body. He was one of the three members of the eleven-member Arkansas delegation who owned no slaves.
David was the scion of a prominent Catholic family.
Carroll served only one two-year term in Arkansas House of Representatives, but the Know-Nothing American party attacks on Catholics in the mid-1850s only solidified his identification with Arkansas's Democrats.
During his short tenure, Carroll supported most desperation methods, with the exception of higher taxes and the arming of slaves. He supported granting more power to the Confederate government and was against any peace proposal with the North.
David married Melanie Mary Scull in 1838. They had seven children, though apparently only three lived to adulthood.
1820-1869
1849-1904
1854-1882
1857-1910
Colonel
