Humphry Marshall was born in West Bradford, Pa., in 1722, the eighth child 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.

Moses Marshall was born in West Bradford, Pa., on 30 November 1758 to Humphry's younger brother, James, and Sarah Marshall. Moses received an English and classical education, and from 1776 through 1779, he studied medicine in Wilmington, Del., under Dr. Nicholas Way. The Revolution, and particularly the nearby Battle of the Branywine (1777), brought a unique opportunity to sharpen his surgical skills. Moses soon abandoned his medical practice in favor of assisting his uncle in his expanding botanical and horticultural enterprise.

By late 1778, he was participating fully in his uncle's operations, assisting in locating, identifying, propagating, and shipping, plant specimens, and he became quite a skilled "practical" botanist in his own right. His most significant contributions were in the preparation of Arbustrum Americanum, and the role he played on numerous exploring expeditions undertaken for the benefit of his uncle and their patrons. Moses appears to have taken great relish in these expeditions, and it was partly for his benefit that his uncle pressed scientific friends, including Franklin, Wistar, Jefferson (albeit indirectly), and members of the American Philosophical Society, to finance and organize a major expedition of the Missouri River region in 1785.

Moses' interest in botany appears to have waned by the mid-1790s, perhaps partly as a result of his involvement in a variety of other endeavors and partly for personal reasons. In 1796, Gov. Mifflin appointed him Justice of the Peace in Chester County, and his duties in this capacity occupied a great deal of his time. Moses' focus seems further to have shifted away from botany upon his marriage to Alice Pennock in 1797. The couple had six children. By the time of his uncle's death, Marshall had more or less washed his hands of the botanical and horticultural business, suggesting that he no longer had any time to fill orders for patrons and even that his uncle's notes probably held little information of value to other botanists. Darlington notes that, as a result of Moses' indifference, Marshall's garden subsequently fell into almost total neglect. Moses Marshall died in Philadelphia on October 13th, 1813.

The life of Moses Marshall, Jr., is considerably less well known than that of his father or his great uncle. Moses, Jr., studied medicine in Philadelphia during the 1830s, and established a general practice in West Bradford shortly thereafter. It appears that he may have lectured publicly on scientific subjects, at least periodically, during the 1840s or 50s. Politically, Moses, Jr., aligned himself with the Democratic party during the Civil War period, opposed actions to keep the South in the Union by force, and (unlike his mildly abolitionist great uncle), did not seem to consider slavery a major evil.

Scope and contents:

The Marshall Papers consists predominantly of incoming correspondence. Humphry Marshall is the recipient of the bulk of the material (approximately 40%), followed by Moses Marshall (approx. 30%). The majority of the outgoing correspondence comes from two "letterbooks" kept by Moses Marshall in 1791 and 1793. These books contain correspondence from only a couple of days each, but provide a record of Marshall's response to inquiries from clients.

The collection is arranged in six series:

1. Correspondence (Boxes 1-3);

2. Poetry (Box 3);

3. Jacob Martin "mathematical" exercise books (Box 3);

4. Darlington's Memorial to Humphry and Moses Marshall (photocopy) (Box 3);

5. Sheets of Arbustrum Americanum (Box 4); and

6. Bound materials (Milleson Account and Memorandum Book and Dover's Useful Miscellanies) (Box 5).

The bulk of correspondence prior to 1800 relates to Marshall's horticultural and botanical operations. There are substantial numbers of orders for plants and seeds from clients in other parts of the United States, England, Ireland, France, and Germany, as well as communications detailing methods of packaging and shipping, and correspondence with middle men in the operation. Also of botanical interest is the correspondence with Marshall's "agents" in the field, including Moses Mendenhall, John and James Watson, Matthias King, Samuel Kramsh, and James Kenny. These men were admirers and F/friends of Humphry Marshall who provided him with specimens collected from various regions of the country in exchange. The unsuccessful search for wild Franklinia alatamaha is mentioned in three of these letters, and six letters include discussions of scientific expeditions either actualized or planned, mostly involving the participation of Moses Marshall. While there is little content to indicate the Marshalls' scientific interests or abilities in these letters, this correspondence provides documentation for the complex network used by the Marshalls to collect, sell and distribute plants.

Approximately 18 letters relate to the Revolutionary War. These include two letters that indicate Marshall's support for the Non-importation agreements; engaging second hand reports of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and of Yorktown; and an important series of correspondence from Samuel Preston Moore relating to the resignation of the trustees of the General Loan Office when American revolutionaries seized control. Also of importance are two letters from Quaker conscientious objectors on the morality of paying taxes to support military activities (see Benezet and Kenny), a letter relating to the North Carolina Regulator Insurrection, and one concerning the arrest by American forces of Quakers suspected of loyalist sympathies. Finally, in the pre-Revolutionary period, the letters of James Kenny provide excellent descriptions of plant collecting and the area around Fort Pitt in 1759-60.

The last quarter of the collection consists mostly of materials relating to Moses Marshall, Jr. Most notable in this correspondence are several letters from William Darlington written as he was preparing his Memorial to Humphry and Moses Marshall. A manuscript biography of John Bartram, Humphry Marshall, and William Baldwin written by an unidentified author is included (#203). The "Milleson Account and Memorandum Book" (Box 5) and the shoemaker's (#187) and miller's (#158) accounts provide information on social aspects of Chester County during the second quarter of the 19th century. Moses, Jr's, political views are clearly expressed in the series of three speeches written during the Civil War.

Separation report:

Several bound volumes were received with the Marshall Papers and have been transferred to the Books Division. A list of the titles is provided. Marshall's copy of Dover's Useful Miscellanies has been retained with the Manuscripts as it is a duplicate copy. Box 4 contains nine uncut and unfolded sets of signatures from Arbustrum Americanum

M-2549
Cat. 9/90

Subject index to the Humphry and Moses Marshall Papers

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