# Charles Carroll of Carrollton: The Last Surviving Signer and the Ledger Behind His Fortune

J.A. Watte. 7 October 2026.

Canonical article: https://jwatte.com/blog/charles-carroll-declaration-mural/


Stand in the National Archives Rotunda and look to the far left of Barry Faulkner's *The Declaration*. The National Archives key numbers **28 men** across the mural, front row first. No. 3 stands in that front row, between Samuel Chase and Stephen Hopkins. [The National Archives key](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-declaration-barry-faulkner/ggEG-74W2YPvQQ).

Fifty six men signed the engrossed Declaration. Carroll outlived every one of the others. The National Archives describes him as the longest lived and last surviving signer, and records his death in 1832 at the age of **95**. [Signers gallery](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/signers-gallery).

Morris has the collapse. Chase has the impeachment. Carroll has the fortune that survived. John Adams put his annual income at **£10,000 sterling** in 1774, and Senator William Maclay called him the richest man in the Union in 1789, according to Maryland's legislative biographical dictionary. [Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/carrollbiodic.pdf).

He spent his adult life before the Revolution as a man Maryland would not allow to vote. A law of **1718** had taken the Assembly vote away from Catholics. [Maryland's 1718 act](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000033/html/am33p--10.html).

The fortune survived independence. Its ledger needs reading in full.

*No. 3 in [The Rotunda Twenty-Eight](/blog/the-rotunda-twenty-eight/). Portrait above: Chester Harding, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, about 1828, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1956.15.1, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Dallas Thayer, released under CC0. The full portrait is reproduced against a neutral background, not reconstructed with AI.*

## A son the law would not let vote

Carroll was born in Annapolis on **19 September 1737**, the only child of Charles Carroll of Annapolis and Elizabeth Brooke. His parents were not married when he was born. The historian Ronald Hoffman quotes the certificate of the Jesuit priest who married them on **15 February 1757**, when their son was nineteen and at school in France. [Hoffman's lecture](https://americanantiquarian.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/44539656.pdf) and [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html).

The family was rich and Catholic, and in Maryland those two facts pulled in opposite directions. Hoffman summarizes the colonial penal laws: Catholics could not vote, hold public office or practise law, although they could own and inherit land. Those restrictions lasted until the Revolution.

Land, not office, was therefore the family's instrument. His father kept enlarging it. The son was sent to Jesuit schools, first at Bohemia Manor in Cecil County in 1747 and then abroad. The legislative dictionary lists St. Omer in French Flanders from 1749 to 1753, Reims in 1754, the College of Louis le Grand in Paris from 1755 to 1757, civil law at Bourges and Paris, and law at the Middle Temple in London until September 1764.

He studied English law although his religion barred him from practising it. He reached his father's house in **February 1765**, after some sixteen years away. [Unpublished Letters of Charles Carroll (1902)](https://archive.org/details/UnpublishedLettersOfCharlesCarroll).

Within months he was writing about the Stamp Act crisis. On **23 November 1765**, in a letter to Edmund Jennings in London, he stated the principle at stake: "the definition of freedom is the being governed by laws to which we have given our consent."

The sentence carried two ironies. Maryland's laws did not let him consent to them by voting. His family's estate also depended on hundreds of enslaved people whose consent no law requested.

## The pen came before the parchment

Carroll married Mary Darnall, known as Molly, on **5 June 1768**. He managed his share of the family's land from Annapolis and from Doughoregan, the family's country seat in what is now Howard County. [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html).

His public career began in a newspaper. Governor Robert Eden had set officers' fees by proclamation on **26 November 1770**, after the Assembly deadlocked over them. Daniel Dulany, writing as Antilon, defended the order in the *Maryland Gazette*. From **4 February 1773**, Carroll answered him as First Citizen. [Assembly proceedings](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000063/html/am63p--10.html) and [State Archivist Edward Papenfuse](https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/121/7047/html/ecpremar.html).

The dispute looked technical. It concerned power. If fees could be fixed by executive order, they worked like taxes imposed without the elected Assembly. The dictionary says his stand brought him "a popular following," and that he was generally considered to have won the argument.

A man who could not vote had become a political force by writing under a pen name. He was elected to the Annapolis committee of observation in 1774 and 1775, and sat in Maryland's revolutionary conventions from 1774.

Congress noticed. On **15 February 1776** it chose Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Carroll to go to Canada, although Carroll was not a member. It asked him to persuade the priest John Carroll to travel with them. The formal commission of **20 March 1776** already used the style Charles Carroll of Carrollton. [Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 4](https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin04unit).

Carroll's own journal records the party reaching Montreal on **29 April**. Franklin left on **11 May**; Chase and Carroll followed on **29 May**. The effort to bring Canada into the cause failed. On **11 June**, back in Philadelphia, the two Marylanders reported to Congress. [Carroll's Canada journal](https://archive.org/details/journalofcharles00carr) and [Journals, vol. 5](https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit).

## In Annapolis for both July votes

Carroll then went where he could still change his colony's position. He appeared in the Maryland Convention at Annapolis on **24 June 1776**. On **28 June**, the convention unanimously recalled the instructions that had restrained Maryland's delegates from supporting independence. The State Archives credits Carroll with introducing that resolution; the convention journal does not name its mover. [Convention proceedings](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--176.html) and [State Archives biography](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209extbio.html).

The convention's minutes settle his whereabouts. He is recorded voting in divisions on **1 July** and **4 July**. The attendance entry for **2 July** lists every member present as on the previous day except one, who was not Carroll. He was in Annapolis when Congress voted for independence on 2 July and when it adopted the Declaration's text on 4 July. He voted on neither in Congress. [Minutes for 1 July](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--181.html), [2 July](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--182.html) and [4 July](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--190.html).

On that same **4 July 1776**, the convention elected him one of Maryland's deputies to Congress. [Election by ballot](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--189.html). Congress received Maryland's new credentials on **18 July**, and that day elected him an additional member of the Board of War. The Journals record the engrossed Declaration being signed on **2 August 1776**, and his name is on it. [Journals, vol. 5](https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit).

A familiar story says he wrote "of Carrollton" after his name so that King George would know exactly whom to hang. A companion story has a bystander remarking that there went a few millions. The documents point elsewhere. He signed his 1765 letter to Jennings as Charles Carroll of Carrollton and asked to be addressed that way, and Congress used the style in his March 1776 commission. It distinguished him from his father and from other Charles Carrolls, and named the Frederick County estate his father had settled on him. Kate Mason Rowland's 1898 biography traces the millions remark to an 1820s sketch in the *Lives of the Signers*, written about half a century after the event. [Rowland, vol. 1](https://archive.org/details/lifecharlescarr01rowlgoog).

## Two governments, one careful legislator

The new state needed a constitution. On **17 August 1776** the convention elected Carroll to the seven member committee that drafted it. [Convention proceedings](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--222.html). The Declaration of Rights adopted on **11 November 1776** protected the religious liberty of all persons professing the Christian religion, and required officeholders to declare a belief in Christianity. Catholics could now hold office. Jews still could not. [Maryland's 1776 constitution](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ma02.asp).

The State Archives counts Carroll as the first Roman Catholic in nearly a century to hold public office in Maryland. He returned to Congress in 1777 and 1778. He then sat in Maryland's Senate for the Western Shore from **1777 to 1800**, and served as its president in **1783**. [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html).

He was also one of Maryland's first two United States senators. The Senate's own history says he resigned on **30 November 1792**, after Maryland barred its state senators from also sitting in Congress. He kept the seat in Annapolis. [Senate history](https://www.senate.gov/states/MD/timeline.htm).

His instincts protected property and order. The dictionary records that he opposed Maryland's confiscation of Loyalist estates as impolitic and financially unsound, and opposed the paper money proposed in 1787.

## The war came for the loans

The family was rich partly because it lent money. The dictionary says the Carrolls had nearly **£30,000 sterling** lent out at interest in 1768, operating "virtually as colonial bankers." [Biographical Dictionary](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/carrollbiodic.pdf).

Maryland's wartime tender act made Continental and state bills of credit a legal tender in all cases. A debtor could therefore repay a sterling loan in paper whose value was falling. On **13 November 1778**, Carroll's father petitioned the legislature to repeal it. The legislature refused, calling the act necessary to the American cause. His petition survives as a printed pamphlet. [The Maryland Press, 1777 to 1790](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000438/html/am438--93.html).

The son had expected the damage. In **April 1777** he wrote to his father that he had long considered the money side of their estate in danger: "If we can save a third of that, and all our lands & negroes I shall think our selves well off." Hoffman quotes the letter from the family's published correspondence. [Hoffman's lecture](https://americanantiquarian.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/44539656.pdf).

That sentence is the cost section in miniature. He was prepared to lose most of the family's loans. He counted the people the family enslaved among the assets he meant to keep.

No source checked for this article measures what the tender law finally cost. The dictionary's later figures put the lending principal at **£85,000 sterling** twenty years after 1768, and at **£128,705 sterling** in 1798. Those totals do not reveal how much was repaid in depreciated paper along the way. They do show that the family's capital did not disappear.

Other wounds of these years had nothing to do with the signature. His father died on **30 May 1782** and his wife on **10 June 1782**, as Carroll reported to correspondents weeks later. The sources checked here document no British or American seizure of his property.

## The ledger had human entries

The fortune had another column. Hoffman counts **386** people enslaved by the Carrolls on the eve of the Revolution, drawn from the family's own inventories, and calls the signer Maryland's largest slaveholder. [Hoffman's lecture](https://americanantiquarian.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/44539656.pdf).

In 1783, after his father's death, Carroll was assessed for **453** enslaved people on his Anne Arundel County properties, **416** of them at Doughoregan. The dictionary says he tried to reduce those holdings over the next twenty years, without saying how. By 1800 there were **182** at Doughoregan, and the number rose again before his death.

He did free some people. Anne Arundel County's manumission books record a deed of **1808** freeing a mother named Prudence and her six children, and other deeds by Carroll through **1818**. Several of them deferred freedom for years or decades. [Manumission record](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000830/html/am830--29.html) and [later deeds](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000831/html/am831--25.html).

During the Missouri crisis, in April 1820, he wrote that slavery was "admitted by all to be a great evil; let an effectual mode of getting rid of it be pointed out, or let the question sleep forever." [Rowland, vol. 2](https://archive.org/details/cu31924032753604). In January 1830 the American Colonization Society, which sought to settle free Black Americans in Africa, chose him as its president. [The African Repository, February 1830](https://archive.org/details/sim_african-repository_1830-02_5_12).

His will settled the question for his family, not for the people it named. Dated **2 September 1825**, with codicils through 1831, it passed enslaved people to grandchildren and to trustees for his daughter's household, by farm and by name, together with all children later born to the named women. Its one manumission was conditional. A man it calls his servant Bill would be freed at Carroll's death if he was under forty five; if older, and so barred by Maryland law from manumission, he was to be released from service with an annuity of fifty dollars. [Carroll's will and codicils](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/mdsa_cr72247-0018-0033.pdf).

A familiar line in Carroll biographies says he introduced a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in Maryland's Senate in **1797**. The State Archives' own 1979 dictionary repeats it. Its current biography reports that neither its staff nor the historian Mary Clement Jeske could find such a bill in the legislative journals for the session that began in November 1797. The story goes back to Richard Caton, Carroll's son in law, who offered it after Carroll's death without a citation. [State Archives biography](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209extbio.html).

At his death, the counts diverge. The 1833 inventory of his personal estate, as the dictionary summarizes it, included **259** enslaved people. The State Archives' current biography says he enslaved "more than 350 human beings" when he died. The gap may reflect people already conveyed to heirs or held outside the inventoried estate. The sources checked here do not reconcile it.

## The last surviving signer

On **4 July 1826**, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. Carroll was left as the last surviving signer. That year he wrote a certificate on a copy of the Declaration for the City of New York. He approved the document "of which I am now the last surviving signer," and recommended its principles "as the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them." [Rowland, vol. 2](https://archive.org/details/cu31924032753604) and [Niles' Weekly Register, 19 July 1828](https://archive.org/details/sim_niles-national-register_1828-07-19_34_879).

On **4 July 1828**, he helped lay the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road, of which he was a director. The stone's inscription, as *Niles' Weekly Register* printed it, identified him as the last surviving signer of the Declaration. [Niles' Weekly Register, 12 July 1828](https://archive.org/details/sim_niles-national-register_1828-07-12_34_878) and [B&O Railroad Museum](https://www.borail.org/explore-learn/exhibitions/founding-the-bo-railroad/).

A polished first person sentence is often attached to that day: laying the stone ranked second only to signing the Declaration, if it was even second to that. It does not appear in the contemporary *Niles'* account. There, John B. Morris, speaking for the company's directors, reports in the third person that Carroll called the signing the proudest act of his life and the laying of the stone the next. The sentiment is contemporary. The famous wording is later.

He died in Baltimore on **14 November 1832** and was buried at Doughoregan Manor, in the family chapel attached to the house. [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html) and [Maryland Historical Trust](https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?NRID=63).

His will treated the three branches of his family, the households of his two daughters and the children of his late son, as equal thirds in much of what it divided. It left Doughoregan Manor to his grandson Charles Carroll, with detailed provisions for who would take it after him. He had already conveyed numbered lots of land to his grandchildren by deeds of February 1821.

The dictionary summarizes the 1833 inventory of his personal property at **$1,460,004.86**. That total includes the 259 enslaved people, plate, and stocks and bonds in roads, banks and the railroad. The final balance before distributions was **$680,250.14**. His land, listed separately, came to about **57,000 acres** in four Maryland counties, with lots in Annapolis and Baltimore and land in New York and Pennsylvania. [Biographical Dictionary](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/carrollbiodic.pdf).

Those are nominal figures from different kinds of records. The inventory total, the final balance and the acreage cannot be added together into one modern net worth.

## Where to find him

Back at the mural, Carroll stands at No. 3, between Chase and Hopkins. Lester Gorelic's study for the National Archives groups Morris, Chase and Carroll at the far left as men who worked for independence "behind the scenes." Faulkner painted an allegory of the draft being presented, not an attendance record; Carroll was not yet a member of Congress at that moment. [Gorelic's mural study](https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/murals.pdf).

The Harding portrait reproduced above belongs to the National Gallery of Art. Check its catalogue before visiting, because a collection record is not a promise that a painting is on view. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted him in 1763, during his years in London; that portrait is at the Yale Center for British Art. Maryland's bronze statue of Carroll by Richard E. Brooks stands in the Capitol Crypt. [Yale Center for British Art](https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1005) and [Architect of the Capitol](https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/charles-carroll-statue).

Doughoregan Manor holds his grave. A 2010 *Christian Science Monitor* report described it as still in the family's hands, and it should not be treated as a public site. The Charles Carroll House in Annapolis offers seasonal tours; its site says the 2026 season has ended. [Christian Science Monitor](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2010/0916/In-Howard-County-Md.-a-tie-to-the-Declaration-of-Independence) and [Charles Carroll House](https://charlescarrollhouse.org/).

The seventh of [the seven ledger laws](/blog/forgotten-founders-ledger-lessons/) fits this family better than any other: **Custodians compound; heroes combust.** The Carrolls behaved like custodians. They lent at interest, moved into bank stock and public securities, divided land among heirs by deed, and tied the manor to the male line.

The law needs one honest correction here. Part of what compounded was the forced labor of hundreds of people, and their children appear in his will as bequests. Custody of a fortune is not the same as innocence in how it was made.

I traced a later American attempt to make a fortune outlast its founder in [The Mellon Dynasty](/blog/mellon-dynasty/).

Look again at No. 3. He missed both July votes, signed in August, and kept his name on the parchment longer than anyone.

Survival keeps a fortune. It does not settle the account.

## Related reading

- [Robert Morris: The Founding Father in the Capitol Dome Nobody Can Name](/blog/robert-morris-forgotten-financier/): No. 1, whose financial collapse is the opposite of Carroll's long accumulation.
- [Samuel Chase](/blog/samuel-chase-declaration-mural/): No. 2, Carroll's companion on the 1776 Canada mission and in the Maryland delegation.
- [The Rotunda Twenty-Eight](/blog/the-rotunda-twenty-eight/): the numbered series directory, with unpublished lives clearly marked.
- [The Ledger Lessons](/blog/forgotten-founders-ledger-lessons/): the seven principles used to compare these lives.
- [The Mellon Dynasty](/blog/mellon-dynasty/): another American fortune organized to outlast the person who built it.

Download [the finished article as Markdown](/downloads/charles-carroll-declaration-mural-article.md) or [the source and uncertainty ledger](/downloads/charles-carroll-declaration-mural-sources.json).

## Fact-check notes and sources

- **Mural, portraits and places:** [National Archives numbered key](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-declaration-barry-faulkner/ggEG-74W2YPvQQ) (Morris 1, Chase 2, Carroll 3, Hopkins 4, front row), [Gorelic in Prologue](https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/murals.pdf), [Yale Center for British Art](https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1005), [Architect of the Capitol](https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/charles-carroll-statue), [Maryland Historical Trust](https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?NRID=63) and [Charles Carroll House](https://charlescarrollhouse.org/). The Harding portrait is National Gallery of Art 1956.15.1 (catalogue: [purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/43671](https://purl.org/nga/collection/artobject/43671)). The Gallery's web page could not be retrieved, so its identification comes from the Gallery's open data and its CC0 donation record on [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chester_Harding,_Charles_Carroll_of_Carrollton,_c._1828,_NGA_43671.jpg), which supplied the bytes (SHA-1 99972cb1b7c84c57ba704c2ed41622732127af7e). Doughoregan's present ownership rests on a 2010 press report, not an official record.
- **Birth, family and education:** [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html), [Biographical Dictionary](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/carrollbiodic.pdf) and [Hoffman's lecture](https://americanantiquarian.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/44539656.pdf), which quotes the 1757 marriage certificate. The State Archives and the dictionary date St. Omer to 1749; Hoffman describes schooling abroad from 1748. The 1765 quotation is from his letter to Jennings, printed in [Unpublished Letters (1902)](https://archive.org/details/UnpublishedLettersOfCharlesCarroll).
- **Catholic disabilities, First Citizen and the constitution:** [1718 act](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000033/html/am33p--10.html), [Assembly proceedings on the fee proclamation](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000063/html/am63p--10.html), [Papenfuse's remarks](https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/121/7047/html/ecpremar.html), [17 August 1776 committee](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--222.html) and [the 1776 constitution](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ma02.asp). Exact dates of the later First Citizen letters rest on Rowland's 1898 printing and are not used in the narrative.
- **1776 whereabouts and signing:** the Convention's minutes ([24 June](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--167.html), [28 June](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--176.html), [1 July](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--181.html), [2 July](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--182.html), [4 July election](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--189.html), [4 July division](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000078/html/am78--190.html)), and the Journals of the Continental Congress, [vol. 4](https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin04unit) (15 February and 20 March) and [vol. 5](https://archive.org/details/journalsofcontin05unit) (11 June, 18 July and 2 August). The State Archives credits Carroll with the 28 June resolution; the journal names no mover.
- **Service:** [State Archives profile](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209bio.html), [Senate history](https://www.senate.gov/states/MD/timeline.htm) and the dictionary (Loyalist confiscation, paper money).
- **Money and the tender law:** the dictionary is the single source for the £10,000 income, the lending totals of 1768, about 1788 and 1798, and Maclay's remark. [Wheeler's Maryland Press](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000438/html/am438--93.html) documents the 1778 petition and the legislature's refusal. The April 1777 letter is quoted from Hoffman, who cites the family's published correspondence. No figure for the tender law's final cost was found, and none is supplied.
- **Slavery:** Hoffman (386 on the eve of the Revolution); the dictionary (453 in 1783, 182 in 1800, 259 in the 1833 inventory); the [State Archives biography](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/html/209extbio.html) ("more than 350" at death, and the 1797 bill); [manumission deeds](https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000830/html/am830--29.html); [the will](https://www.msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/000200/000209/pdf/mdsa_cr72247-0018-0033.pdf) (recorded pages 2, 3, 14 and 16 read from the scan); [Rowland, vol. 2](https://archive.org/details/cu31924032753604) for the 1820 letter; and [The African Repository](https://archive.org/details/sim_african-repository_1830-02_5_12) for the 18 January 1830 election. The counts at death conflict and are reported side by side. The 1773 Doughoregan list held by the Maryland Center for History and Culture could not be retrieved and was not consulted directly.
- **Final years and estate:** [Niles' Weekly Register, 12 July 1828](https://archive.org/details/sim_niles-national-register_1828-07-12_34_878) and [19 July 1828](https://archive.org/details/sim_niles-national-register_1828-07-19_34_879), [B&O Railroad Museum](https://www.borail.org/explore-learn/exhibitions/founding-the-bo-railroad/), [National Archives signers gallery](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/signers-gallery) and the dictionary, the single source for the inventory total, final balance and 57,000 acres. Personal property, final balance and land are kept separate, and all figures are nominal.
- **Claims declined:** no "of Carrollton" for the hangman, no documented "few millions" remark, no first person railroad quotation, no 1797 abolition bill, no vote for independence on 2 or 4 July, no unattributed "richest man in America", and no fortune figure beyond the contemporary estimates cited.

*This post is informational, not financial advice. Historical claims are cited above; institutions and publications are mentioned as nominative fair use with no affiliation implied.*