ANNA ELLA CARROLL at OLD TRINITY
Anna Ella Carroll was born August 29th, 1815. The eldest daughter of Governor Thomas King Carroll, she read extensively in his library and immersed herself in Maryland politics.She died in on February 19, 1894 and is buried at Old Trinity.
Although Anna and her family were slaveholders, she favored a gradual ending of slavery and resettlement of former slaves. At the time of the Civil War she urged then Governor Hicks to keep Maryland in the Union, and wrote tracts supporting the President’s constitutional power to suppress rebellion. After the war, she fought a long battle for recognition and compensation, a cause championed by many suffragists.
Anna spent most of her adult life in Baltimore or Washington DC. where she died in on February 19, 1894. She and Governor Carroll are both buried in the Old Trinity churchyard because her youngest brother became a beloved doctor in Church Creek. He followed his mother’s devotion to Anglicanism and is credited with the 1853 restoration of Old Trinity.
His youngest daughter, Nellie Calvert Carroll, lived to see the restoration and rededication of the building in 1960. As a result of her final bequest, wreaths are placed on the Carroll family graves to this day. The Friends of Anna Ella Carrol will hold a ceremony at her grave at 2 pm on Saturday, August 27th.
The cemetery, eight miles from Cambridge on Route 16 west, one mile beyond the town of Church Creek, is open to visitors every day of the year from dawn until dusk.