John Lee Carroll was born on September 30, 1830 on the Homewood estate, near Baltimore, Maryland, now a part of the Johns Hopkins University campus, but was reared at the ancestral Doughoregan Manor, near Ellicott City, Maryland. He was a greatgrandson of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his grandfather and father were also named Charles. His mother was Mary Digges Lee, grand-daughter of Thomas Sim Lee, twice governor of Maryland.
John's general education was secured from private tutors, and Roman Catholic schools of the District of Columbia and Maryland, and his legal training in the Harvard Law School and a law office in Baltimore.
In 1851 Carroll was admitted to the bar, and, after an extensive visit to Europe, he began practise in Baltimore in 1854.
He moved to New York in 1859 with the object of practising law there; but, because of his father's failing health and his own Southern sympathies in the slavery controversy, he returned to Maryland in two or three years, and took charge of Doughoregan Manor, which, a short time after their father's death, he bought from his brother Charles, and made his country home. He was early interested in politics, and allied with the Democrats, who, in 1868, elected him state senator. In 1872 he was reelected, and two years later, made president of the Senate. In 1875, after bitter opposition on the score of his being a Roman Catholic, he was elected governor of Maryland, a position which he filled with energy, courage, and, on the whole, interest in the common good. Especially along agricultural and commercial lines his policy was progressive. This was a time of great economic depression and resulting labor disturbances, and in July 1877, Gov. Carroll was confronted by a strike of Baltimore & Chio Railroad employees in protest against a ten percent reduction of wages. When substitutes were put in, the strikers became violent and began to destroy property in Cumberland. Carroll, therefore, announced that he would send state troops to the town, and when destructive rioting began in Baltimore he telegraphed President Hayes for federal troops. These came, and order was restored by July 23, after nearly a week of rioting and the loss of a number of lives; but deep bitterness survived in some labor quarters toward the governor. After his term as state executive, Carroll refused all further political office, and spent most of his remaining years at Doughoregan, where, as "lord of the manor, " he dispensed hospitality to all comers. He died at his winter home in Washington.
In 1875, Carroll became the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of Maryland, opposed by James Morrison Harris. He won by a 10, 000-vote majority and was inaugurated as governor on January 12, 1876.
Carroll was elected into the Maryland State Senate of the General Assembly of Maryland in 1867 and served two terms. He was elected President of the State Senate in 1874.
The Governor was also a member of the District of Columbia Society of the Sons of the Revolution.
In later years, Governor Carroll served on the Howard County Board of Education and served in 1883 on an early grand jury that used both Caucasian and African American members.
In 1856 he married Anita Phelps, daughter of a rich New York merchant. She died in 1873, and in 1877 he married Mary Carter Thompson of Staunton, Virginia.
