Laramie County WY Archives Biographies.....Carroll, Wesley P. 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 30, 2011, 1:28 pm

Source: See below
Author: A. W. Bowen (Publisher)

HON. WESLEY P. CARROLL.

   With the martial spirit of his Irish ancestry burning high in his veins, with
unquailing courage and unyielding force of character, with a power of logic and
forensic utterance that carries all before it, and with literary and poetic
graces of speech that enable him to twine the club of Hercules with the flowers
of rhetoric, Hon. Wesley P. Carroll of Cheyenne is a very accomplished and has
been a very useful man. From his early youth he has been deeply and
intelligently interested in the welfare of his country and, wherever he has cast
his lot in its broad expanse, he has labored to promote that welfare and
stimulate to more intense and productive activity all its educational, moral,
literary and civic forces. He is a native of Vermont, born near West Burke in
that sturdy old state. When he was six months old his parents moved to Lynn,
Mass., and after a residence of seven years in that city returned to their
Vermont home. Mr. Carroll was an invalid in childhood and boyhood and was
therefore able to get but little education at the schools; but his mind was
insatiable and by diligence and good judgment in reading he made up the
deficiency, and so completely that at the age of twelve his knowledge of history
enabled him to talk politics intelligently with any man in his county. When he
was but eleven years old his mother died, and circumstances soon after compelled
him to go out into the world and fight the battle of life for himself. His
ancestry is said to include close kinship with Charles Carroll of Carrollton,
the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, but the Judge has
never investigated this claim, being firmly convinced that a man should be
valued for his own merit rather than for that of his relations. In July, 1861,
when but fourteen years of age, he joined the Third Vermont Infantry and served
with this regiment two years and was then honorably discharged on account of
disabilities incurred in the service. As soon as he recovered his health in some
measure he enlisted a second time, becoming color-bearer of the Third Vermont
Battery of Light Artillery, and with this battery he served to the end of the
war. His command was a part of the Army of the Potomac, and he was conspicuous
and active in all the campaigns of that great fighting organization from the
time he entered the field to the final triumph at Appomattox. He took part in
thirty-two hard-fought battles and, including sieges, was under fire 343 days
during the war. While in the infantry after his first enlistment, he was one of
the 200 men who made the desperate charge across the Warwick River at the siege
of Yorktown. Of this gallant band only forty-five came out of the charge, of
which competent military critics asserted that it was the nearest approach to
Thermopylae that occurred in the Civil War. At the battle of Reams Station he
ordered the countermarch of thirty pieces of light artillery on his own
responsibility, getting them off the field just in time to save them from
capture by the Confederates, there being no infantry available to support the
guns. At the second battle of Peeble's Farm he was the first to discover the
approach of a dense mass of Confederates charging down on the Union lines
without any previous alarm having been given, and without orders turned his
twelve-pound Napoleon gun on the enemy, by his rapid firing he not ychecked the
advance, but by the alarm it gave he enabled Wheaton's Division to form in line
of battle, repulse the attack and save Grant's army from being cut in two. With
his own hand .Mr. Carroll fired the signal gun for the final attack on
Petersburg and Richmond, the attack which resulted in the fall of those two
cities and ultimately in the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox. Judge
Carroll returned from the war on June 15, 1865, and in the September following,
engaged in farming in Minnesota for a short time, then he became a law-student
in the office of J. Q. and J. D. Farmer of Spring Valley in that state, in due
time being admitted to the bar. He held the offices of justice of the peace,
municipal justice and municipal attorney at Spring Valley and was twice elected
a member of the board of education. All this eventful life occurred before he
was twenty-five years old. At the request of the Republican party managers he
stumped the southern part of Minnesota in 1868, 1869 and 1871, and for three
successive years he delivered the annual address before the joint agricultural
fair of Fillmore and Mower counties. In 1873 he came to Wyoming, where, on
December 15, he opened a law-office at Cheyenne. Just six months after locating
in that city he was appointed assistant prosecuting attorney for Laramie county,
a position he held for more than three years. Some time later he became city
attorney for one term. He was also territorial Supreme Court reporter for a
number of years and from 1888 to 1895 held the office of justice of the peace,
an office then far more impotant than it is now. The Judge was in active
practice at the bar for more than twenty years, and has been connected with the
press from time to time for many years. He has given close and careful attention
to literature and has written main' productions in rhyme that have attracted
extensive notice and made him a reputation as a poet, as a result thereof he has
been called on more than fifty times within the last score of years to indite
and to read original poems for churches and other organizations on public
occasions. In 1890 he published a volume of poems entitled "Moss Agates," which
was well received by the public. In 1899 he wrote and published "The Sabbath as
an American War Day," a book that has elicited many flattering criticisms and
praises from high sources and is destined to have an elevated and a permanent
place in literature. Within the present year (1903) he has published a volume
entitled "Curious, Singular and Remarkable Facts in American History," which is
having a large circulation. In all things involving the literary, educational
and moral welfare of the community the Judge has taken a leading part, while for
nine years he maintained and kept in active life at his own expense the Carroll
Lyceum, and on several occasions he has delivered before the people of his town
valuable courses of lectures. The West has many men of mental power and forensic
ability; and many with a high order of poetic talent and literary culture. But
there are few like Judge Carroll, men who are at once the strength and the
ornament of society.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

PROGRESSIVE MEN OF THE STATE OF WYOMING

ILLUSTRATED

CHICAGO, ILL.
A. W. BOWEN & CO.
PUBLISHERS AND ENGRAVERS
1903


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