Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (Published for the Institute of Early AME) [Hardcover]

Ronald Hoffman (Author), Sally D. Mason (Collaborator)

Book Description

Series: Published for the Institute of Early AME | Publication Date: April 30, 2000

Charles Carroll of Carrollton is most often remembered as the sole Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. In this monumental study of the Carrolls in Ireland and America, that act vindicates a family's determination to triumph without compromising lineage and faith.

Ronald Hoffman peels back layer after layer of Carroll family history, from dispossession in Ireland to prosperity and prominence in America. Driven to emigrate by England's devastating anti-Catholic policies, the first Carroll brought to Maryland an iron determination to reconstitute his family and fortune. He found instead an increasingly militant Protestant society that ultimately disenfranchised Catholics and threatened their wealth and property. Confronting religious antagonisms like those that had destroyed their Irish ancestors, this Carroll and his descendants founded a fortune--and a dynasty that risked everything by allying with the American Revolutionary cause.

Meeting each crisis with a tenacious will to survive and prevail, the Carrolls earned an esteemed place in the new nation. Hoffman balances private lives against their contentious public role in American history. The journey from Irish rebels to American revolutionaries shaped and shattered the Carrolls--and then remade them into one of the first families of the Republic.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[A] magnificently researched and engrossing book. (Times Literary Supplement)

What Hoffman has done, adding significantly to the many previous Carroll studies, is investigate the family's background--the chaotic Ireland of Tudor and Stuart times. This is a complicated narrative, but Ronald Hoffman tells it surely and well. (Baltimore Sun)

Ronald Hoffman breathes passion and interest into this [story]. An outstanding contribution. (Georgia Historical Quarterly)

A contribution both to early modern Irish history and to the history of colonial Maryland. An engrossing tale, expertly told. (Journal of American History)

Hoffman offers a magnificently researched and engrossing book that places a family firmly within the context of its time. It is a story of patriotism, capitalism and religious discrimination. (Library of Virginia Literary Awards Committee)

About the Author

Ronald Hoffman is director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia, and professor of history at the College of William and Mary.

Sally D. Mason is associate editor of the Charles Carroll of Carrollton Papers.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1st edition, edition (April 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807825565
• ISBN-13: 978-0807825563
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,077,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rigorous Analysis Yields Engaging View of Colonial Life, January 24, 2001

By 

Eugene G. Barnes (Dunn Loring, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (Published for the Institute of Early AME) (Hardcover)

I was originally attracted to this book out of a simple curiosity about the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence (Charles Carroll outlived Adams and Jefferson by about six years, or about 56 years after 1776!). On a deeper level, I hoped to learn more about the kind of early capitalist that would be attracted to signing on to the American Revolution in general. What this book helped me discover was a family that had over time become focused, almost obsessed, with making a buck under fairly adverse circumstances (namely, continuing in their Roman Catholic faith that made it difficult for them to thrive, even in an enclave as seemingly sympathetic as colonial Maryland, with its relatively large Catholic population). But when the time came for this family to rise above its simple wealth building and to champion the cause of the Revolution, it did indeed rise to the occasion, however brief and painful the process might be. (Hoffman attends to both the private and public lives of the Carrolls.) The history of the Carrolls is a part of the history of the magic that was the American Revolution. It is not surprising that the book ends abruptly with the death of Charles Carroll's father and his wife, about 10 days apart from one another in 1782 (though there is a brief summing up of Carroll's remaining 50 years and the attention attracted by his death in 1832). The story is told, the dynasty pretty much complete.

What's the book like? At times it seems downright willfully prosaic, and the story proceeds much like a carefully written doctoral dissertation - all conclusions fully supported and made in as logical a context as possible, all contentions politically correct for our time. Hoffman's goal is of course to be scholarly and thorough, not to be entertaining or controversial. Thus the sweep of this history must emerge and coalesce in the mind of the reader. Leave being beaten over the head with the broader conclusions inherent in the narrative to more popularly written histories.

Suffice it to say, if you're a municipal library and you need to beef up your Revolutionary War material, this is a prime buy. If you're a true history buff, this would be an excellent choice to work into your reading list. It has the effect of immersing you into the spirit of the times and providing you with detail you could not have imagined you would find interesting (but you do). If you're a casual reader, just be advised - this is heavy stuff. It's not an easy read, but it is ultimately a rewarding one.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-Opening History of Colonial and Revolutionary Maryland, July 3, 2001

By 

Carolyn D. Mack (Wilmington, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (Published for the Institute of Early AME) (Hardcover)

Ronald Hoffman is an excellent historian who has brought great knowledge of Chesapeake social and cultural history to this biographical work that places three generations of the Carroll family within their colonial context. It is a wonderful biography that gets the reader into the minds and lives of these three Charles Carroll's. But for me the best thing was the number of times it made me think, "Oh, that's how it was." I have read enough colonial history to know that there were lots of tenant laborers and not just slaves in the region, to know that Catholic Maryland quickly became Anglican Maryland, and to know that the Revolution was not just about ideas but also about social change. Ronald Hoffman's narrative, however, really brings these facts home. His book is not about any one of these issues in particular, but in telling the story of three generations of Carroll's in Maryland he brings home the greater circumstances of the colony better than many historians who have set out to make a case for one of the above arguments, or many of the other fascinating takes on early Chesapeake society contained in this highly readable book. I have not read any book lately that I enjoyed more.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A history of continuities, November 26, 2007

By 

Taylor Walsh "Taylor" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782 (Paperback)

This is perhaps the most pleasurable "academic" history I have come across. Although it provides an extensive account of life in the Chesapeake through the lives and business dealings - and there are plenty of those enumerated - of the tenacious Carroll family, I was also struck by Ronald Hoffman's major theme of family continuity, of purpose driven by recollection and ambition that the Carrolls had in spades. The very tightly researched accounts of the family history in Ireland, and of all the other families like them in the chaos of the 17th century, is little short of astonishing. I'll admit to an enduring interest in Irish history, but this one illustrates why Carrolls and others left their broken aristocracy. That continuity touches on my own forebearers, one of whom was a first cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton's. She married another Irish immigrant Marylander and set out in 1796 to populate the then frontier in Kentucky with other Catholics, I am sure at direction of one of their neighbors in Upper Marlborough, MD, Fr. John Carroll, first Catholic bishop in America and also Charles' first cousin. A great read on many levels.