{Written by chapter member, Eric Olson at ericbear01@earthlink.net.}

I have just discovered proof positive that my Philip Carrel was in Washington Co., PA in 1812 – probably from 1806 through 1812. I knew from NARA records that he had served in the PA Militia as a volunteer in Captain William Sample’s Company in 1812, and had marched to Buffalo in response to the alarm of 1812, and that Wm. Sample was said to reside in Washington, PA about that time. Now, in an on-line book of the military history of Washington Co. during the War of 1812, is a detailed account of how and when Sample raised these men. It is quite a stirring account of patriotism, guaranteed to get your blood boiling, apparently written by an author who was there at the time, summer of 1812. Sample raised these men within 2 days, from Washington town and surrounds, for a six-month term, including Philip Carrel. Philip appears on the Company roster taken at Buffalo etc... I have searched just about every source available to me on line, and can find zero records on Philip Carrel in Washington Co., yet he and his wife and nine children were there. The book where I found this information online is at: www.libraries.psu.edu/do/digitalbookshelf/28055728/28055728, pages 15 through 20.

Eric has been corresponding with John Keiffer at jvmusik@pop.mindspring.com and here is what John has found on this family. Eric emailed John with the following question.

I am interested in the children of Ephraim Taylor CARLE and Mary A. Irwin, particularly the unnamed one you mention. I am attempting to identify the parents of my ancestor, Philip Carrel who died in 1813 during the War of 1812, from Jefferson County, Ohio. Philip and his wife, Mary moved with at least 5 children from Western PA to Jefferson Co. about 1807. Their eventual 9 children were John, Mary, Margaret, Joseph, Anthony, Catherine, Henry, Jane and Philip, all born between 1798 and 1812. On the records of the time I notice Ephraim Taylor Carle spelled in many different ways. The 1820 census lists Ephraim T. Carrel in Warren Twp. (along with Joseph Carrel), while in the 1807, 1808, 1809 and 1810 tax rolls for Jefferson Co. list Taylor E. Carrol, E. Taylor Carrel, E. Taylor Carrel and E. Taylor Carrell respectively. The will book then lists the 1838 will for Taylor Carle. The 1790 census for Elizabeth Twp., Allegheny Co., PA lists Ephrem Taylor Carrel.

Various Surname Spellings Carrel/ Carl/Carle/ Carol and today Carroll

Ephraim Taylor Carle II, ggggrandfather – born Dec. 23, 1757, Hunterdon Co., NJ. Died in Harrison Co., Ohio Dec. 18, 1837, he was 79 yr. old. Occupation – Revolutionary War Soldier as Private from NJ; prisoner of war, farmer. He is listed as a Revolutionary Soldier buried in Harrison Co. from John Baird’s Co. 2nd Battalion, Continental Line Regiment.

From the book, New Jersey in 1793, Somerset Co. – Western Precinct he served in 2nd regiment of the Cumberland Militia. Other Carle soldiers mentioned in this book were - Abraham, Buckley, David, Isaac, Israel, Jacob, Jeremiah, Jesse, Jonas, Nicholas, and Samuel.

Ephraim Taylor was 22 when he married Mary A. Irwin in Allegheny Co. PA, born about 1760, died in Allegheny Co., 1789. They had the following children:

Then he married Nancy Clarke, Allegheny Co., born abt. 1770 in NJ. Nancy died before 1836 at 66 yr. old. They had the following children:

Joseph, son of Ephraim Taylor and Mary A. Irwin, born 1781 died in York Twp., Belmont Co., Ohio in July 14, 1868. Joseph and wife, Maria Gordon Carle were first owners of land in York Twp. Belmont Co., Ohio. They were living in Jefferson County when Joseph drafted to serve in the War of 1812. He purchased and owned land in Belmont County, Ohio. The homestead that he built may still be standing on Co. Rd. 57, not far from the old Pleasant Hill Methodist Church and Cemetery, where he and his family, including his daughter-in-law, Jane Graham Carle, the wife of their oldest son, William Ross Carle.

Among their descendants were farmers, riverboat men, doctors, lawyers, a state governor, engineers, factory owners, schoolteachers, librarians, steelworkers, oilmen, and banker.

PART TWO

How I Found My Carroll Ancestor, Who died As a Soldier during the War of 1812, by Eric Olson. “My ancestor Anthony Wayne Carroll’s children stated in his obituary that their father was born in Pennsylvania, western part, on 20 February 1806. He died 27 April 1882 in Olathe, Kansas. His parents were unknown, except a family legend had it that his father had died in the War of 1812. He was one of many siblings, and that his distraught mother had given him away as a small boy to a better-off acquaintance or family friend to rear, and that his father had named him after General Anthony Wayne, his father’s “army buddy”. After news had reached his mother that her husband had died and was not returning home from the war she lined her children up along a fence just before Christmas, 1813, and invited the man to take his pick. He chose the child Anthony, who was 7-years old. The man, wearing a large black cape, hoisted little Anthony onto his horse, and rode away. Such was the legend. There is no evidence that Anthony Carroll, my ggg grandfather, ever saw his birth family again. Worse, we did not even know if Carroll was Anthony’s real name or an adoptive surname.

What we did know was that Anthony married a Miss Belinda Root in 1826 in Granville, Licking County, Ohio. Their eight children were Mary Damaris, Philip Noble, Alanson Root, Anthony Wayne Jr., Ellen Belinda, Moses, Lydia Theresa and James Dilly Carroll. But who were his parents? The only real clue we had for research was that his father had died in the War of 1812. In a book “Known Military Dead During the War of 1812” by Ex-Lieut. Clarence Stewart Peterson, 1955, there is reference to two Carrolls; St. Clair Carroll and Philip Carroll. A search for St. Clair (Sinclair) Carroll’s service records online revealed he was from Washington D.C. and so probably not our Ohio man.

The Philip Carroll who was known to have died was from Ohio. Searching the War of 1812 rosters online at OHS revealed a Philip Carroll in Captain Robert Gilmore’s First Regiment of Ohio Militia, from county unknown. A comparative analysis of the names of soldiers in Gilmore’s Company with the 1820 Census for Jefferson County provided a strong indication that the Company was from Jefferson County. In addition, a Google search for “Captain Robert Gilmore” brought up a widow’s pension application in the name of Mary Swan, widow of Corporal Thomas Greenfield (Grenfeld), who stated that her soldier husband was recruited by Gilmore at Steubenville in 1813.

Our cousin Ann Grant found, in Carol Willsey Bell’s book “Ohio Wills and Estates to 1850”, a listing of an estate proceeding for a Philip Carrel in Jefferson County, Ohio, 1814. Was this our man? We knew that ggg grandfather Anthony Wayne Carroll named his first two children Mary Damaris and Philip Noble. Damaris and Noble were the names of his wife’s parents, Damaris Barrett and Noble Root. Perhaps the children had been named for BOTH sets of grandparents. If that were the case then the paternal grandparents would be Philip and Mary Carroll. We started searching through the records in Jefferson Co., and found documents setting up an estate administration for Philip Carrel in 1814, his wife Mary relinquishing her right to administer it. (Philip died intestate.) Then later in 1818 were entries in the Common Pleas Journal establishing that Philip Carrel had died while in the service of the United States, and naming all his heirs, who were Mary and the children listed by name and birth date. (*See note 1) Bingo! We had found our pot of gold! We had broken through a brick wall of 200 years standing, and were able to go back one more generation in our family tree. And also proved our ggg grandfather’s surname was his own, and not an adoptive surname. (*See note 2)

Now it was time to search for his service records. The Ohio archives have him as a private in Captain Robert Gilmore’s Company, but not much else. The National Archives and Records Administration, NARA, was the place to look. Our first request to NARA was for volunteer militia records, and it did bring forth his military service in 1812 in Pennsylvania Militia. In another source, the “Report from the Secretary of War in Obedience to the Resolutions of the Senate of the 5th and 30th of June, 1834, and the 3rd of March, 1835, in Relation to the Pension Establishment of the United States” (1835 Pension Rolls), (Duff Green, Washington, D.C.: 1835) his heirs were living in Jefferson County, Ohio, in 1835 and they had elected to receive five years half-pay in lieu of Bounty Land in compensation for the death of Philip. Well, you don’t receive Federal Bounty Land for State Militia service. Something was amiss. We had neglected to request from NARA any Federal or Regular military service records, if they existed. That turned out to be Regular Army, 2nd Artillery, Captain Stanton Sholes’ Company of 100 men. He enlisted in May 1813 for five years, and died 10 December 1813.

The Regular Army service records packet included a letter from the Carrel children’s legal guardian in Ohio that referred to relinquishing Bounty Land #715 in lieu of 5-years military half-pay. (The Bounty Land was in southern Illinois. See the Bureau of Land Office (BLO) website for this type of information online.)

A Google search for Captain Stanton Sholes’ Company of one hundred men yielded eyewitness accounts of the movements of the Company during the war. In 1812 Captain Stanton Sholes was residing on 3rd Street in Beaver, Pennsylvania. He had just received a Captain’s Commission from President James Madison, and ordered to raise a company of one hundred men, which he did. This was not Pennsylvania Volunteers or Militia, but was regular U. S. Army, 2nd Division of Artillery. They eventually marched to what is now Cleveland, arriving in May 1813, and built Fort Huntington and bateaux for the invasion of Canada. Among those one hundred men was my ancestor Philip Carrel, who died during that war on 10 December 1813.

Detroit, winter of 1813-1814, taken from “The History of Detroit and Wayne County”, Silas Farmer, 1890.“The battle of the Thames (River in Canada) was fought on October 5 (1813). (The British General) Proctor was defeated, and Tecumseh killed. Perry and Harrison returned to Detroit, October 7, the army under Governor Shelby (of Kentucky) arriving on the 10th.

Before winter set in, concerning this period, one of the soldiers says, “To prepare for winter we had a heavy job before us. The British had burned the fort, leaving nothing but the heavy earthworks. They left nothing combustible, not a board or a stick of timber, and we were compelled to go to the woods, from one to three miles distant, or go to the islands, still further, to get logs and poles with which to build huts to winter in. Until these could be got ready, we occupied tents and vacant houses in the city.”

“Before they had got into their winter quarters the army was attacked by an enemy which decimated their ranks to an extent far greater than their losses by battle. A disease, similar in action to the cholera, carried them off by the hundreds. By a post mortem examination, they discovered the nature of the disease, and then put a stop to it. By January 23, 1814, the epidemic had passed away, and the (remaining) troops were in fair health…” There is a Michigan Historical Marker, registered site S0242, erected in 1964, containing these words over the site of these mass graves in Downtown Detroit, at the corner of Washington Blvd. and Michigan Avenue that reads: “Hardship struck soon after American troops regained Detroit on Sept. 29, 1813, during the War of 1812. Soldiers quarters were lacking, and food supplies became desperately short. Then a disease resembling cholera broke out among the soldiers. By Dec. 1, 1813, nearly 1,300 officers and men were sick. Medical supplies were almost gone. Conditions worsened. When coffins became unobtainable, many soldiers were buried in a common grave at this site. Some 700 may have died before the epidemic ran its course.”

In later years during the urbanization of Detroit, and paving of downtown streets, there are accounts of human bones being dug up. These bones were re-interred in various, undocumented, locations in the area.

From all of the above, I conclude that my Patriot ancestor Philip Carrel, of Pennsylvania and Ohio, died as a soldier, of an epidemic and was buried in a common grave outside the walls of Fort Detroit, on 11 December 1813, although he may have died of wounds. He never returned home to Ohio.

Very unfortunately, two key records have come up missing. In Jefferson County the probate records of Philip’s estate are missing from the courthouse, and at NARA the application for Bounty Land is mis-filed and therefore, I am afraid, lost forever.

*NOTE 1: The nine children of Philip and Mary Carrel were John, Mary, Margaret, Joseph, Anthony, Catherine, Henry, Jane and Philip Jr. born in that order between 1798 and 1813. *NOTE 2: In a random act of kindness a writer on the OHHARRIS List at RootsWeb.com published the following online. It solved our mystery of who had reared our ggg grandfather Anthony Wayne Carroll, and where….

The original spelling changed from Carrel to Carroll sometime after 1850. “Harrison Telegraph, Cadiz Ohio, Saturday, November 6, 1824, SIX CENT REWARD Walked away, being too lazy to run, the 14th inst. an apprentice to the Tanning business named, ANTHONY CARRELL, about 19 years of age…reward will be given to any person who will return said apprentice to the subscriber. THOMAS DAY, New Rumley, Harrison County, Ohio, October 19, 1824.” {Submitted by Eric Olson, Sept. 2006. Ericbear01@earthlink.net as fall 2006.