The family stock of Marshall, like that of Jefferson, was Welsh, as is
generally the case in names with a double letter, as a double f or a
double l. This Welsh type was made steady by English infusions. The
first Marshall came from Wales in 1730, and settled in the same county
where Washington, Monroe, and the Lees were born. He was a poor man, and
lived in a tract called "The Forest." His eldest son, Thomas, went out
to Fauquier County, at the foot of the Blue Ridge, and settled on Goose
Creek, under Manassas Gap. This Thomas Marshall had been a playmate of
George Washington, and, like him, was a mountain surveyor, and they
loved each other, and when the Revolutionary War broke out both went
into the service, Thomas Marshall being colonel of one of the Virginia
regiments. His son, John Marshall, who was not twenty years old when the
conflict began, became a lieutenant under his father. The mother of John
Marshall was named Mary Kieth, and his grandmother Elizabeth Markham,
and the latter was born in England.
Marshall's father had a good mind, not much education; but he was a
great reader, and especially loved poetry, and he taught his son to
commit poetry to memory, and to model his mind on the clear diction and
heroic strain of poets like Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, and Pope. In
these books of poetry the great chief-justice found the springs to
freshen his own good character. To the last day of his life he loved
literature, and was especially fond of novels, and of books written by
females.
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