Charles Carroll of Carrollton Celebrated His Birthdays the Way He Lived: Fully
On the 289th anniversary of Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s birth, his later birthday celebrations reveal a Founder who remained vigorous, curious, and engaged with America’s future well into his nineties.
It's Been 289 Years Since Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s Birth
September 19th marks the 289th anniversary of the birth of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Carroll lived to the age of 95, an extraordinary lifespan for someone born in 1737, when the average life expectancy (including childhood mortality) was less than half that number. Yet the achievement was not simply the number of years he accumulated. It was how fully he continued to live them.
Well into his nineties, Carroll welcomed visitors, followed public affairs, read French and Latin literature, rode horseback, examined new inventions, and ventured onto America’s first commercial railroad. His birthdays brought family and friends together for medals, Maryland venison, champagne, music, games, memorable toasts—and, at 93, a railroad excursion.
The surviving accounts do not portray a frail relic being ceremonially displayed as the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. They reveal an alert, sociable, physically active man who remained interested in how the world worked and where his young country was going.
An Exceptional Span of Life
Life expectancy comparisons from Carroll’s era require care. Frequently repeated figures in the thirties or forties are life expectancies at birth, greatly reduced by the terrible mortality experienced by infants and children.
Historical reconstructions suggest that around the beginning of the nineteenth century, a white American man who survived to age 20 might expect to live approximately another 40 years—reaching, on average, about 60. Carroll lived roughly 35 years beyond that benchmark.
His wealth and social position afforded him advantages unavailable to most Americans. Nevertheless, reaching 95 while remaining so active was extraordinary in any station of life.
Carroll attributed his longevity to habits that sound remarkably disciplined even today.
Shortly before his birthday in 1828, he wrote that he retired early, rose before sunrise in both winter and summer, and took a cold bath between five and six o’clock on summer mornings.
He avoided distilled spirits, drank little wine, ate no supper, and generally left the breakfast and dinner tables while he still felt he could eat more.
Visitors supplied more vivid evidence. In 1830, one described Carroll taking a cold bath every summer morning, riding horseback eight to twelve miles, drinking water with dinner, and taking as much exercise as possible. Another account said that at 93 he could still mount a horse and ride six or seven miles without great fatigue.
His birthday celebrations reflected that vitality.
89th Birthday: A Birthday Buck and Medals for the Family
The year 1826 carried a special significance. The nation had celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. That same day, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of one another. Carroll was left as the Declaration’s sole surviving signer.
That September, his birthday joined a personal milestone to a national moment of remembrance.
A contemporary account reported that more than 100 deer roamed the Harewood estate, home of Carroll’s daughter Catherine and her family. From the herd, the best buck was selected each year as a birthday offering to the venerable Carroll. On September 20, 1826, he received the “heart-felt congratulations” of family and friends at Doughoregan Manor in what was then commonly called Elkridge.
The family also commemorated the occasion with specially die-struck medals. Their design united Carroll’s advancing age with his unique place in American history. His portrait appeared on one side. The reverse honored him as the surviving signer following the Declaration’s fiftieth anniversary.
Gold medals went to his daughters and eldest grandson. Silver versions were presented to his other grandchildren. They were more than birthday gifts. They were family keepsakes linking one generation’s memories to the nation’s founding.
Even amid the tributes, reports emphasized Carroll’s daily activity. He continued to plunge into his spring-fed bath before sunrise, ride horseback in good weather, and devote much of his day to reading.
90th Birthday: Forty-Four Guests at Doughoregan Manor
The following September brought an even more exuberant celebration.
Henry D. Gilpin, a family friend from Philadelphia (and representative of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company), attended the event at Doughoregan Manor. In a letter written two days later, he described Carroll’s birthday as “a grand gala.”
Carroll spent the morning with Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal before joining the gathering around noon. Guests began pouring into the estate. Baltimoreans arrived in gigs (a light, open, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage designed to carry one or two passengers) and carriages. Neighbors came from the surrounding countryside, while the Elkridge contingent appeared on the fine horses for which the district was known.
Forty-four people sat down to dinner.
Gilpin remembered “glorious saddles of venison,” mutton, plum puddings, substantial dishes, and “kickshaws of all sorts.” as well as the small delicacies and fancy preparations of an abundant early nineteenth-century table.
Carroll drank two glasses of champagne and then retired from the table, leaving his grandson Charles to continue the honors with wine and Regent’s punch.
Many guests remained overnight. Others rode away long after dark, prompting Gilpin to observe that they must have needed all their horsemanship to avoid “spilling.” Those who stayed continued the celebration with games and singing late into the evening.
After Carroll left the table, Baltimore merchant Robert Gilmor offered a toast that captured both the affection of the gathering and the meaning attached to Carroll’s long life:
“May public and private virtue be crowned ever as now with the garland of years.”
93rd Birthday: "Taking a Ride on the Railroad"
Carroll’s physical vigor becomes even more apparent when we follow him onto the fledgling Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
According to railroad historian James D. Dilts, Carroll made at least three documented B&O Railroad rides late in life:
December 21st, 1829: Baltimore to Carrollton Viaduct to lay the last viaduct stone.
May 5th, 1830: Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills thirteen mile test run.
September 20th, 1830: 93rd birthday joyride "taking a ride on the railroad" at Ellicott's Mills.
There may have been other rides that simply left no surviving record.
These were not smooth journeys in comfortable passenger coaches. Nearly every component of the early railroad remained experimental: the rails, wheels, bearings, car bodies, bridges, and means of propulsion. Early cars could resemble road coaches or open carriages mounted on railroad wheels. One nineteenth-century historian described riding in them as literally going “thundering” along, with the wheels pounding the iron rails beneath them.
A man merely being preserved for ceremonial appearances would not likely have undertaken such rides repeatedly. Carroll did.
The September 20th excursion was especially appropriate. Dilts identifies it as part of Carroll’s 93rd-birthday celebration. Carroll took a railroad ride with friends and dignitaries on the new line between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills.
As the guests made their way back to Baltimore, they came across Peter Cooper's experimental steam locomotive, known as the Tom Thumb. It's not clear whether this planned or coincidental. Although the exact sequence of events is uncertain, the Tom Thumb did transport the party guests back to Baltimore.
It also remains unclear if the Tom Thumb was used in Carroll's earlier journey that day with the party guests between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills.
The more revealing fact is that a man born in 1737, when long-distance travel meant horses, coaches, and sailing ships, chose to celebrate turning 93 by experiencing the new technology that promised to transform America.
Still Asking How Things Worked
Carroll was not simply an honored passenger. He possessed the background, and the lifelong habits of mind, to appreciate the machinery and engineering ideas behind the railroad.
His extensive European education included mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, and surveying. Those subjects had practical value when he returned to Maryland and assumed responsibility for immense and widely scattered properties. Boundaries had to be surveyed, distances calculated, land divided, watercourses understood, and roads planned. Carroll became adept at reading surveys and maps, checking measurements, and considering how the physical characteristics of the land affected its use and value.
That analytical instinct extended beyond property lines. Over the course of his long life, Carroll dealt with gristmills, flour mills, ironworks, millraces, dams, roads, river navigation, and canal improvements. His interests were not exclusively mechanical. He was always concerned with costs, markets, and management. He almost always wanted to deconstruct it to the extent of understanding why.a mill produced efficiently, how water could be controlled, whether a transportation route was practical, and what an improvement would accomplish.
That experience gives added meaning to his participation in a demonstration by Ross Winans, one of the inventive mechanics associated with the young railroad.
Winans was experimenting with a friction-reducing wheel arrangement. In an upper room of the Baltimore Exchange, Carroll climbed into a small rail car placed on a short section of track. A remarkably small weight, attached to a string passing over a pulley and descending into the hall below, pulled the car and its famous passenger forward.
Prominent Baltimoreans gathered around to watch. John H. B. Latrobe later recalled that everyone appeared as delighted “as children with a new toy.”
The demonstration was playful, but its purpose was serious. Reducing friction meant that a horse, or eventually a mechanical engine, could move a heavier load with less effort.
Carroll’s presence in the little car supplied both a recognizable human load and the judgment of one of the B&O’s directors and most respected advocates.
He was not the experiment’s engineer. Nor was he a passive ornament placed in the car for a photograph that could not yet be taken. He was a mathematically educated landowner, businessman, and internal-improvements advocate who had spent a lifetime evaluating whether practical systems worked. As a B&O director, he had reason to care whether Winans’s invention fulfilled its promise.
The scene captures something essential about him.
Throughout his life, Carroll evaluated arguments, laws, investments, agricultural practices, transportation projects, and public policies by asking how they worked and what results they might produce.
Advanced age had not dulled that instinct. In his nineties, he remained willing to climb aboard, feel the machinery move beneath him, and judge the result for himself.
The Garland of Years
Charles Carroll died on November 14, 1832, less than two months after observing his 95th birthday. His life had stretched from colonial Maryland through the Revolution and into the opening of the railroad age.
He had lived long enough to become the last surviving signer of the Declaration, but he did not spend his final years looking exclusively backward. His birthday celebrations tell us that:
In between those journeys, he took part in experiments aimed at improving the new mode of transportation. He also attended specific B&O board meetings, assisted in securing government approvals and funding, and helped advocate for, and publicly launch the railroad.
The medals honored what Carroll had accomplished. The railroad rides, and ongoing work, revealed that he was not yet finished engaging with the world.
Two hundred eighty-nine years after his birth, Charles Carroll’s later birthdays remind us that a long life is measured by more than its duration. His was measured in family gathered around the table, friendships renewed, ideas tested, books read, horses ridden, journeys undertaken, and a continuing willingness to greet the future.
He celebrated his birthdays the way he lived his life .. fully!
Discover more about Charles Carroll of Carrollton and the B&O Railroad:
I'll be speaking about Charles Carroll (at live events) throughout 2026 and 2027 to celebrate the 199th and 200th anniversaries of the B&O Railroad. Those presentations are free to attend.
Check out Charles Carroll of Carrollton: America’s First Entrepreneur (our inaugural Railroad History Reimagined project).
Make time to visit the B&O Ellicott City Station Museum. Completed in 1830, the station is America's first railroad depot. There are full size replicas of the Tom Thumb and Pioneer passenger car on display. It even has a working model railroad (HO) miniaturization of the original 13 mile route between Baltimore and Ellicott City.
