Jackson "Mac" Marshall 1894-1977

MARSHALL, HAMMER

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 1/13/2019 at 21:18:32

Dubuque Folklore II

What Better Gift

James L. Shaffer
Author

Just before he died in 1975, Jackson Mac Marshall gave to Dubuque a parcel of land for the City of Dubuque in remembrance of his father, Harry Marshall, his grandfather William Marshall and himself.

It was in 1851 that William Marshall, a boiler maker, like his sons and grandson to follow, started the W. Marshall Boiler Works in Dubuque's flat area. The business stayed in that area until Jackson Marshall returned to Dubuque after W. W. I.

One of the first thirteen men to be drafted from Dubuque at the start of the war, Marshall returned to Dubuque to run the business in a more relaxed manner than his father or grandfather before him.

After first touring the United States, Mexico, and Canada as a railroader, Jackson Marshall settled in Dubuque working for most of the major industries of the cities installing and maintaining boilers.

In 1938, then only 43, Mac made his first stab at retiring. “My health wasn’t too good and I wanted a place to roost the rest of my life,” Marshall recalled in 1979 when he was named First Citizen of the Year.

“I bought a fifty-one acre set-up off of 32nd Street and just wanted to be left alone to do a little farming,” he remembered. “Guys from the Packing Company would come calling at 1 A.M., wanting me to do some quick work for them,” he said. “It got so bad for the phone company with everyone calling them for my number that they came to the farm one day offering to string one out to me for nothing just to give their operators some peace, but I wouldn’t take one. I never did like phones.”

It was this hide away on top of 32nd Street near JFK road that Marshall donated to the city of Dubuque in 1975 and which is today Marshall Park.

Knowing he would die soon, Jackson Marshall wanted the fifty-one acres for which he paid $3,000 and now valued at three quarter of a million to remain as a place for other people to get away from it all as he had done. His only condition was that the City must always maintain it as a park.

It was his attorney, David Hammer, who summed up just what Marshall had done when he told the city council. “Many may have given more, but few have given as much.”

Because Marshall had lived so quietly and so much to himself it was generally believed he had given everything he owned to the city when he donated the park. It wasn’t learned till after he died that he also remembered the Masonic Temple with more than $100,000 as an added token for his love for Dubuque.

Just before he died, Jackson Marshall said, “So many take so much from Dubuque, but leave so little behind.” That wasn’t true for Mac, he left for all Dubuquers, an investment that will last forever.