[2] However, his mother took in boarders and later worked as a teacher to support the family, and Charles was able to attended local public schools and Alexandria Academy.

[5] Carlin graduated from law school and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1891 and began his legal practice in Alexandria.

[6] With the support of Claude Swanson,[7] Carlin was elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the unexpected death of John F. Rixey.

He had faced a hotly contested Democratic primary, then handily defeated Republican Ernest Howard in the general election.

[8] In 1913, Carlin had succeeded in passing a bill to study creating a national park from the Manassas Battlefield, which his predecessor Rixey had introduced, but Congress failed to enact the appropriation the investigative committee recommended, due to the start of World War I.

He later managed the unsuccessful 1924 Presidential campaign of Alabama Senator Oscar Underwood (who lived in Alexandria and opposed the Ku Klux Klan).