Anna Ella Carroll
Born:
August 29, 1815, near Pocomoke City, Maryland
Died:
February 19, 1894, Washington, D.C.
Resting Place:
Old Trinity Church, Church Creek, Maryland
Brief History:
She was born into a very wealthy and prominent family in her state and city: her great-grandfather, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the last surviving signers and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and later in the new Congress of the United States, her father was the Governor of Maryland from 1830 to 1831, and her mother was the daughter of a Baltimore physician. Carroll entered the national political arena in the 1850s, following her father's appointment as Naval Officer for the District of Baltimore by Whig President Zachary Taylor. In 1854, Carroll joined the American Party following the demise of the Whigs. With the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, Carroll freed her slaves. She began to work to oppose the secession of the Southern states and helped keep Maryland loyal to the Union.
In the fall of 1861, Carroll traveled to St. Louis to work with secret agent, Judge Lemuel Dale Evans, who had been appointed by Secretary of State William H. Seward to assess the feasibility of a Union invasion of Texas. She also gathered information from the head librarian, who was the brother of Confederate General Joe Johnston. During the remainder of the war, Carroll worked with Lincoln on issues pertaining to emancipation and colonization of American slaves. Although Carroll had freed her own slaves, she lobbied Lincoln against issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. In the postwar years, Carroll traveled with Lemuel Evans to report on his role in the Texas constitutional convention to draw up a new state constitution. She was active in the Republican Party in Maryland and continued her political writing career. After 1870, however, she had to devote much time to trying to gain payment for $5,000 which she insisted that the government still owed her for her wartime publications. Every military committee but one voted in her favor, but no bills passed the Congress.