Maria Newton Marshall

Maria Marshall (standing, second from right) and family, 1898

     In my previous post I mentioned in passing that my great grandmother, Elizabeth Houston Row, engaged the services of Maria Newton Marshall of Orange County to teach at Sunshine, our old home place in Spotsylvania. One of my alert readers picked up on my reference to the fact that Maria was a great granddaughter of John Marshall, who had been Chief Justice of the United States.
      Indeed, she was. Maria was the daughter of Fielding Lewis Marshall, grandson of the Chief Justice. Fielding was the father of nineteen children by two wives. Maria was born in 1869 of Fielding's second wife. The family was closely affiliated with St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Orange and they were very active as teachers and missionaries. Maria herself worked as a missionary in the mountain communities of Virginia. The photograph above comes from an article in the June 2007 number of the newsletter of the Orange Historical Society, written by Frank Walker, Jr. It is a short and interesting read and can be found here.
     I am not certain how my great grandmother linked up with Maria. The Marshalls were well known in the area because of their missionary work. Also, Maria's father served in the Sixth Virginia Cavalry with my great grandfather during the Civil War. Based on the ages of Lizzie Row's children, I would guess that Maria taught at Sunshine sometime during the late 1880s to early 1890s.
     In June 1899 my great grandmother lost both her mother and her oldest son, Houston Row, within nine days of each other. This double tragedy triggered an outpouring of grief from many friends and family members who wrote letters of condolence to my great grandmother. Among them was one from Maria Marshall. The first page of that letter is shown below, followed by my transcription.

Maria Marshall to Lizzie Row, 16 June 1899

Transcription of Maria Marshall's letter

     Maria Newton Marshall lived until 1934 and is buried in Graham cemetery in Orange County.