JESSE MARSHALL
Jesse Marshall took up a claim on section 22, about two and one-half miles from McGeehon's house, on section 27, in July, 1852, and settled on it. From some of the early settlers, who knew Marshall, the following account of him and his family is taken: He had a wife and ten children, the two oldest being young men. The family lived in their wagon until winter, by which time they had finished the shell of a log house, into which they moved. Mr. Marshall was the only one of the family who could either read or write, and that was about his only accomplishment. He was a fair type of the backwoodsman, and when he had his cabin completed, he remarked that it was only the seventy-fifth that he had built He had dwelt in the backwoods portions of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and various portions of Iowa, and each of these localities he had left before the wolves and deer had ceased to make them their haunts. During the fall of 1853, he took his ox team and went to Rockport, Missouri, for provisions, of which the family had run short. He was gone about one month, and during his absence the family maintained life on pumpkins and slippery elm bark. It is said that if he could get a jug of sod-corn whiskey, a plug of dogtail tobacco, a little corn meal, and a saddle of venison, he was supremely happy, and cared for nothing else while this lasted; and this was characteristic of the whole family. In January, 1854, he had been in Indiantown on a drunken debauch and on his return, went to bed sick, and died in a few days. Some days after his death occurred, T. J. Byrd was riding past the place, and seeing one of the boys out not far from the house, asked him how the family were getting along. The young man answered: "Oh, all right except Dad, he's dead." Mr. Byrd went into the house, and found Mrs. Marshall sitting by the smouldering fire, her face buried in her hands. He asked her how they were prospering, to which she replied, "All right but the old man--he is dead." Mr. Byrd stepped to the corner of the room, and found the old man covered up with some blankets, stark and cold in death. On asking why the deceased had not been buried, Mr. Byrd was informed that Geo. Reeves had been sent to Iranistan for a coffin, but that, although he had been gone five days he had not yet returned. Reeves, however, soon afterward returned, with a rude coffin, into which the lifeless body of Jesse Marshall was placed, and a grave having been dug near the house, he was put away for his long sleep beneath the winter's snows. It should be said here, for the benefit of the generous-hearted settlers of the vicinity, who were noted for their hospitality, that they did not know, nor had they any means of knowing, that Marshall was lying neglected in his house, for Reeves had gotten under the influence of liquor immediately after going to Iranistan, and hence had neglected to make known his mission; nor did the family of the old man see fit to inform any one of what had occurred. And thus it happened that other settlers in the vicinity, who would have been only too glad to have done all in their power in caring for the dead, were left in total ignorance of the affair till after Mr. Byrd chanced to pass along. Marshall's death was the first in Atlantic township. His family lived here until the spring of 1860, when they went away, going to Missouri or Kansas, it is not known which. Jesse Marshall sold his claim in section 34, to Clayborn Marion, in 1853, and took up a claim and built a cabin on section 29, where he died in January, 1854.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pg. 834-835.
