Camp Carroll

Camp Carroll. From Plantation to Federal Camp. , This land was part of a 2,568-acre tract named Georgia Plantation, that Charles Carroll purchased in 1732. By 1760, his son Charles Carroll, a lawyer, had constructed a Georgian summer home, Mount Clare. the Carroll family lived here until 1852. , In April 1861, in the first bloodshed of the Civil War, a crowd of Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore attacked the 6th Massachusetts Infantry as it passed through the city en rout to Washington. By summer the U.S. Army had established camps throughout Baltimore. Brig. Gen. John Reese Kenly, of the Maryland militia, opened a recruiting office and a month later took command of the 1st Maryland Infantry as colonel. He converted the pastures to the west of Mount Clare, then a hotel, into a training facility named Camp Carroll. , On March 22, 1862 the U.S. Army created the Middle Department in Baltimore to protect rail and communication lines. Gen. James Cooper’s brigade, organized in April, including troops stationed here at Camp Carroll near the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line. The brigade was disbanded on May 25, 1862. Units were trained here in drill, guard, and patrol duties. Officers may have been quartered in the Mount Clare Hotel, which offered an outstanding view of the camp. In the fall of 1862, Camp Carroll was renamed Camp Chesebrough, honoring Lt. Colonel William G. Chesebrough, 17th U.S. Infantry. In 1864 the name reverted to Camp Carroll. The camp remained in use by Federal forces until the war ended.