Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

[36] _Va. Mag. Hist. and Biog._, iii, 261; xviii, 86-87.

[37] The curious sameness in the ancestry of Marshall and Jefferson is found also in the surroundings of their birth. Both were born in log cabins in the backwoods. Peter Jefferson, father of Thomas, ”was the third or fourth white settler within the s.p.a.ce of several miles” of his cabin home, which he built ”in a small clearing in the dense and primeval forest.” (Randall, i, 11.) Here Jefferson was born, April 2, 1743, a little more than twelve years before John Marshall came into the world, under like conditions and from similar parents.

Peter Jefferson was, however, remotely connected by descent, on his mother's side, with men who had been burgesses. His maternal grandfather, Peter Field, was a burgess, and his maternal great-grandfather, Henry Soane, was Speaker of the House of Burgesses.

But both Peter Jefferson and Thomas Marshall were ”of the people” as distinguished from the gentry.

[38] Morse, 3; and Story, in Dillon, iii, 330.

[39] Randall, i, 7. Peter Jefferson ”purchased” four hundred acres of land from his ”bosom friend,” William Randolph, the consideration as set forth in the deed being, ”Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch”! (_Ib._)

[40] Peter Jefferson was County Lieutenant of Albemarle. (_Va. Mag, Hist. and Biog._, xxiii, 173-75.) Thomas Marshall was Sheriff of Fauquier.

[41] Randall, i, 12-13; and see _infra_, chap. II.

[42] Tucker, i, 26.

[43] Records of Westmoreland County, Deeds and Wills, viii, I, 276.

[44] _Ib._ Seventy years later La Rochefoucauld found land adjoining Norfolk heavily covered with valuable timber, close to the water and convenient for s.h.i.+pment, worth only from six to seven dollars an acre.

(La Rochefoucauld, iii, 25.) Virginia sold excellent public land for two cents an acre three quarters of a century after this deed to John Marshall ”of the forest.” (Ambler, 44; and see Turner, Wis. Hist. Soc, 1908, 201.) This same land which William Marshall deeded to John Marshall nearly two hundred years ago is now valued at only from ten to twenty dollars an acre. (Letter of Albert Stuart, Deputy Clerk of Westmoreland County, to author, Aug. 26, 1913.) In 1730 it was probably worth one dollar per acre.

[45] A term generally used by the richer people in referring to those of poorer condition who lived in the woods, especially those whose abodes were some distance from the river. (Statement of W. G. Stanard, Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society and Dr. H. J. Eckenrode of Richmond College, and formerly Archivist of the Virginia State Library.) There were, however, Virginia estates called ”The Forest.” For example, Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, a wealthy man, lived in ”The Forest.”

[46] Will of John Marshall ”of the forest,” made April 1, 1752, probated May 26, 1752, and recorded June 22, 1752; Records of Westmoreland County, Deeds and Wills, xi, 419 _et seq._ (Appendix II.)

[47] _Ib._, 421.

[48] _Autobiography_. Marshall gives the ancestry of his wife more fully and specifically. See _infra_, chap. V.

[49] Will of Thomas Marshall, ”carpenter,” probated May 31, 1704; Records of Westmoreland County, Deeds and Wills, iii, 232 _et seq._ (Appendix I.)

[50] Most curiously, precisely this is true of Thomas Jefferson's paternal ancestry.

[51] There is a family tradition that the first of this particular Marshall family in America was a Royalist Irish captain who fought under Charles I and came to America when Cromwell prevailed. This may or may not be true. Certainly no proof of it has been discovered. The late Wilson Miles Cary, whose authority is unquestioned in genealogical problems upon which he pa.s.sed judgment, decided that ”the Marshall family begins absolutely with Thomas Marshall, 'Carpenter.'” (The Cary Papers, MSS., Va. Hist. Soc. The _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_ is soon to publish these valuable genealogical papers.)

Within comparatively recent years, this family tradition has been ambitiously elaborated. It includes among John Marshall's ancestors William le Mareschal, who came to England with the Conqueror; the celebrated Richard de Clare, known as ”Strongbow”; an Irish king, Dermont; Sir William Marshall, regent of the kingdom of England and restorer of Magna Charta; a Captain John Marshall, who distinguished himself at the siege of Calais in 1558; and finally, the Irish captain who fought Cromwell and fled to Virginia as above mentioned. (Paxton, 7 _et seq._)

Senator Humphrey Marshall rejected this story as ”a myth supported by vanity.” (_Ib._) Colonel Cary declares that ”there is no evidence whatever in support of it.” (Cary Papers, MSS.) Other painstaking genealogists have reached the same conclusion. (See, for instance, General Thomas M. Anderson's a.n.a.lysis of the subject in _Va. Mag. Hist.

and Biog._, xii, 328 _et seq._)

Marshall himself, of course, does not notice this legend in his _Autobiography_; indeed, it is almost certain that he never heard of it.

In constructing this picturesque genealogical theory, the kins.h.i.+p of persons separated by centuries is a.s.sumed largely because of a similarity of names. This would not seem to be entirely convincing.

There were many Marshalls in Virginia no more related to one another than the various unrelated families by the name of Smith. Indeed, _marechal_ is the French word for a ”shoeing smith.”

For example, there lived in Westmoreland County, at the same time with John Marshall ”of the forest,” another John Marshall, who died intestate and the inventory of whose effects was recorded March 26, 1751, a year before John Marshall ”of the forest” died. These two John Marshalls do not seem to have been kinsmen.

The only prominent person in Virginia named Marshall in 1723-34 was a certain Thomas Marshall who was a member of the colony's House of Burgesses during this period; but he was from Northampton County.

(Journal, H.B. (1712-23), xi; _ib._ (1727-40), viii, and 174.) He does not appear to have been related in any way to John ”of the forest.”