Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Humphrey MARSHALL
Humphry Marshall was born in West Bradford, Pa., in 1722, the eighth son of Abraham and Mary Hunt Marshall. His parents, Quaker immigrants from Derbyshire, England, provided him with only a rudimentary English education, which ceased altogether at age 12 when he was apprenticed to a stone mason. However, from very early in life Marshall was drawn to the study of natural history and continued his education on his own, reading as widely as possible given the scarcity of books in Chester County at that time. With the encouragement of his cousin, the botanist John Bartram, Marshall developed considerable "practical" skill in botany and natural history by his mid-1730s, and began to cultivate friendships among other scientists both in America and abroad. Eventually, his correspondents came to include the British botanists John Fothergill, Peter Collinson, Sir Joseph Banks, and John Coakley Lettsom; the American scientists Thomas Parke, Benjamin Franklin, George Logan, Joseph Storrs, Timothy Pickering, John Dickinson, and Caspar Wistar; and French scientists and plant collectors including Michel-Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, the Comtesse de Tesse, and Conrad-Alexandre Gérard; as well as a number of German, Dutch, Swedish and Irish plant collectors and scientists.
In 1748, Marshall married Sarah Pennock (ca.1720-1766) and took up the management of his father's farm near the west branch of the Brandywine River. During the next few years, his time was largely consumed by farming, however, he continued to use free moments to pursue his botanical research. By the late 1750s, he began to exchange locally collected specimens with natural historians in other parts of the country and Great Britain, receiving scientific equipment, books, exotic specimens, money, or marketable goods such as linen in recompense. His work had advanced to a stage that when he began a major enlargement of his father's farmhouse in 1764, he added a conservatory for the culture of rare plants, probably the first such structure in Chester County.
Upon the death of his father in 1767, Marshall was left a substantial inheritance, enabling him to concentrate more time and resources in his botanical work. By this time his correspondence with the British botanist, John Fothergill, had developed into an especially fruitful relationship, for Fothergill not only encouraged Marshall to collect plants beyond the confines of Chester County, but he paid well for Marshall's efforts. Equally importantly, Fothergill helped introduce Marshall to other botanists and plant collectors with the resources to pay for American plants. Within a few years, Marshall found that he could depend almost entirely on horticulture and plant collecting for his income. His business expanded rapidly by means of a network of relationships established through family members, fellow Quakers, and fellow scientists.
In 1772, Marshall established a botanical garden on his estate, stocking it with herbaceous and arboreal representatives of the local flora and as many exotic plants as he could obtain from other parts of the nation and Europe. The following year he began the construction of a new house adjacent to the garden, handling all phases of the construction by himself, and in that year, he was selected as a trustee of the General Loan Office. Despite pro-Independence sentiments, including long-standing support for the Non-importation agreements, Marshall was in a precarious position as a pacifist and Quaker during the early days of the Revolution. Marshall carefully monitored the events of the war as they unfolded, and was himself caught up when, in 1777, the Trustees of the Loan office resigned as a body. Under the leadership of Samuel Preston Moore, the Trustees felt that to remain true to their affirmations that they would carry out the business of the crown, they should resign rather than follow the new laws.
Marshall's publishing career includes contributions on the natural history of tortoises, on sunspots, and agriculture, however he is most remembered for Abrustrum Americanum (1785), the first botanical treatise written by a native American on American plants, produced in America. Despite very slow sales in the United States, its use of Linnean taxonomic nomenclature (though the plants are arranged alphabetically in the text) considerably enhanced Marshall's reputation among his European clientel. His scientific work and service to the scientific community earned Marshall honorary memberships in the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture and the American Philosophical Society.
Following the death of his first wife, Marshall married Margaret Minshall (1744-1823) in 1788. There were no children by either marriage. In the last two years of his life, his vision was greatly impaired by cataracts, for which he underwent an apparently unsuccessful surgery. He died in 1801 and was buried at Bradford Meeting House.
Biography HUMPHREY MARSHALL was born in the township of West
Bradford, Chester county, on the 10th day of October, 1722. His father, Abraham Marshall, was a native of Gratton, in Lincolnshire, England, born in the year 1669. came to Pennsylvania about the year 1697, and settled near Darby,
where, on the 17th of January, 1702-3, he married Mary, the daughter of James Hunt, of Kingsessing, also an emigrant from England, and one of the companions of William Penn. (It is remarkable, that Mary Hunt, the mother of Humphrey Marshall, was the sister of Elizabeth Hunt, the mother of John Bartram; and thus the two earliest and most eminent Botanists of
Pennsylvania, were first cousins, the sons of two sisters; and both the sons natives of Chester county. The Mothers were born in England. Happy old gentleman was James Hunt, to have two such noble grand-sons!) In the year 1707, Abraham Marshall removed to the forks of the Brandywine, near the western branch of that stream, where he purchased large tracts of land, among the Indians, and continued to reside until his death, which took place, December 17th, 1767, at the age of about 98 years. His wife died in the spring of 1769, in her 87th year. Abraham and Mary Marshall had seven sons and two daughters. Of these nine children, Humphrey was the eighth. In those primitive times, the opportunities for school learning, in Chester county, were scanty and limited. The children of the earliest settlers were, from necessity, kept at home and
put to hard work, as soon as they had acquired sufficient muscular strength to be serviceable. - Humphrey Marshall used often to state, that he never went to school a day, after he was twelve years of age. Being constitutionally robust and
active, he was employed in agricultural labours until he was old enough to be apprenticed to the business of stone mason.
This trade he learned and followed for a few years. The walls of his residence, at Marshallton, still testify to his skill as a practical workman. His leisure hours, in the winter season, were devoted to scientific studies, and he soon evinced a decided partiality for Astronomy and Natural History. His taste for Natural History, no doubt, was awakened and promoted by his intercourse with, and the example of his cousin Bartram. In the year 1773, he commenced his BOTANIC
GARDEN, at Marshallton, and it soon contained a rich collection of the forest trees, and ornamental shrubs of our country. The noble Magnolias, still flourishing there, are worthy of a visit on any summer day. With the aid of his
nephew, Dr. Moses Marshall, he was soon engaged in an active
correspondence with Dr. Fothergill, Dr. Lettsom, Sir Joseph Banks, and others, by which England was largely supplied with our Vegetable Treasures. These active and interesting engagements did not prevail him from attending to the business of the Religious Society of 'Friends,'of which he was an influential member. He also performed the duties of County Treasurer, and Trustee of the Provincial Loan Office for several years, with exemplary fidelity.- In 1785, he published an account of the Forrest trees and shrubs of this country, under the title of 'ARBUSTUM AMERICANUM, The American Grove.' This is believed to be the first truly indigenous Botanical Essay, prepared and published in this Western Hemisphere, and was a creditable performance. Like its respectable author, however, it was half a century in advance of the community in which it appeared. But such services are not wholly lost. 'A remarkable man moves through his age like a lamp throwing light round him on all sides.'In 1786, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. In Schreber
edition of the GENERA PLANTARUM, in 1791, a genus of American Plants belonging to the Natural family of COMPOSITAE, was dedicated to Humphrey Marshall and his Nephew, by the name of MARSHALLIA. In the latter years of his life, Humphrey;s vision was much impaired by Cataract; and on the 5th of November, 1801, he finally sank under an attack of dysentery, aged 79
years. He was twice married, but had no children. A few years since, the authorities of West Chester manifested a becoming sense of what was due to the character and memory of Humphrey Marshall, by dedicating a Public Square to the use of the citizens, with the name of MARSHALL SQUARE; which if properly
attended to, will be an honor and an ornament to the beautiful Borough.
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