Samuel Marshall (1801-1835) was the second son of John and Catharina Truby Rohrer Marshall.  He was born in the Rohrer-Marshall Tavern in Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.  After the death of Samuel's parents in 1806, Joseph Marshall and John Patterson of St. Clairsville, Ohio, were appointed guardians for him and his brothers Andrew and John.  He disappears from located written records until his marriage (about 1823) to  Phebe Perry (1803-1885) in Scrubgrass Township (southeast Venango County, Pennsylvania)--just a few miles upriver from the home of his Aunt Hovey.  Indirect evidence suggests that Samuel was reared by the Hoveys.  Primary indicators are (1) he was buried in the Hovey-Robinson plot of the Parker Presbyterian Cemetery--the first adult member of the family to lie there; (2) he named his first son Simeon Hovey Marshall; (3) his half-sister, Betsy Rohrer Robinson, named a son after him--Samuel Marshall Robinson; and (4) his daughter Isabelle Marshall (Belle) Phipps named a son Simeon Hovey Phipps.

 

     Random data tell us something about him.  He served as postmaster in Foxburg in 1833--a political appointment indicative of the family's alignment with the Jacksonsian Democrats in rural, Western Pennsylvania.  In 1834 he and Ephraim Galbraith built the first house in Lisbon, Scrubgrass Township, Venango County; and Marshall opened the first store in this village on/near the farm of his father-in-law Moses Perry.  He died very young, just a few years after his older brother Andrew drowned in the Ohio River.  (His other four siblings all lived beyond the age of 80.)  His estate file and gravestone tell us that he was a "gentleman"--indicated by the honorific title "esquire"--and the estate file also shares clues about his life with his young family in the only decade they had together.

 

     Samuel's widow Phebe became postmistress at Parker's Landing after his death.  This is an indicator that the extended family had both political connection and also the wherewithal to provide a building in which post office business could be handled.  Often, a general store was the site.  And it would be interesting to know how many women were serving in similar positions in the United States in the late 1830s!

 

     In time, Phebe and her four children moved to Franklin, the county seat of Venango County.  She lived there as a widow until her death in 1885.  For a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War, she was with her daughter Mattie Marshall Welsh in Parkersburg, Virginia, where Mattie's husband, Dr. Walter S. Welsh, worked as a physician.  They returned to Franklin when the war broke out and Dr. Welsh was serving with the West Virginia Union forces as a surgeon.

 

     Samuel was remembered by his son Simeon, who named a son Samuel; and by his daughter Sarah Marshall McGough, who named her first son Samuel Marshall McGough; and see below for others who remembered him by naming sons after Samuel.  Phebe is buried with the Welsh family in the Franklin Cemetery.

 

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