Carroll was born in Davis County, Iowa; he graduated from the Missouri State Normal School (now Truman State University) in 1884. He worked as a livestock dealer, teacher, and newspaper publisher. He was a member of the Iowa Senate (1895-98), postmaster of Bloomfield, Iowa (1898-1903), and Iowa state auditor (1903-09). He was elected Governor in 1908 and reelected in 1910. On November 30, 1910, Governor Carroll was hailed as a hero for entering a burning building in Des Moines and retrieving a trunk containing valuable property. After leaving office, Carroll worked in the life insurance business in Des Moines. He died in Bloomfield, Iowa, and was buried at the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Bloomfield, Iowa.

Born in Davis county, Iowa, March 15, 1860. His parents were Willys and Christena Carroll, who emigrated from Ohio in 1854. He grew to manhood upon a farm, where he received a good country school education and became a teacher in the public schools of the county. He afterward attended school at the Southern Iowa Normal, at Bloomfield, and the North Missouri State Normal, at Kirksville, Missouri, from which latter institution he graduated in 1884, receiving the degree of B. S. D. During the five years following he taught in the graded schools of Missouri, three years as principal of the public schools at Jamesport and two years as superintendent of the public schools at Rich Hill. While attending school at Kirksville he made, the acquaintance of Miss Jennie Dodson, a classmate and quite an accomplished elocutionist, to whom he was married June 15, 1886. They now have one child, Paul, a bright little boy 6 years of age. In 1889 Mr. Carroll located in Bloomfield, Iowa, the county seat of his native county, and January 1, 1891, purchased a one-half interest in the Davis County Republican, Mr. A. H. Fortune, who owned the other half of the paper, being postmaster at this time. Mr. Carroll assumed the entire management of the paper, and in 1893 purchased the entire plant, which he has continued to own ever since, and has built the paper up and made it one of the best in the state. During the time that he has edited the official organ of his party the county has changed from an almost hopelessly Democratic to a reasonably reliable Republican county, much of which is clue to his management of the paper and to his untiring work upon the stump. In 1892 Mr. Carroll was honored by being nominated by the Republicans of the Sixth Congressional district as their candidate for presidential elector, and had the pleasure of sitting in the electoral college of Iowa and casting his vote for Benjamin Harrison and Whitelaw Reid. In 1893 the party nominated him as a candidate for the lower House of the Legislature from Davis county, and although in a Democratic county he was defeated by only a small plurality. Again in 1895 he was chosen as a candidate, this time as Senator from the Appanoose-Davis district, to run against a fusionist, and although the district in the previous election had given 250 majority against the Republicans, Mr. Carroll was elected by nearly 200 votes. He is one of the youngest men who will occupy a seat in the Senate, and his place was won by vigorous and untiring work in the campaign.