Francisco Carrascón

Who was Francisco Carrascón?

Don Francisco Carrascón, also known as Don Francesco Carascon, was a high ranking Spanish Military Officer and War Commissioner in the 18th Century. He was born in Zaragoza but ancestrally he was descended from the House of Carrascon of Ágreda, Cintruenigo and Tudela. The founder of the Spanish House was Doctor Don Garcia Fernandez de Carrascón, a wealthy Spanish cleric from Ágreda, Spain who was a protonotary apostolic and personal doctor to Pope Adrian VI as well as a canon of the Cathedral of Toledo, Spain. He left his fortune in the form of a mayorazgo or family trust to his nephew Don Pedro Carrascon and his descendents. Doctor Carrascon is buried in an elaborate chapel in the Church of San Miguel Arcangel in Ágreda. The Carrascon were recognized as having Hidalgo or noble status in the mid 17th Century, but were noble going back to at least the 15th Century.

Don Francisco served as War Commissioner in Orbetello in 1737–1739 just after the War of Polish Succession, and in Messina from 1740 to 1750. He was a close associate of the founder of the Passionist Order, St. Paul of the Cross and he is mentioned frequently in his letters from the era.