Mr. and Mrs. James Ellis Marshall

James Ellis Marshall was born in 1808 in Bradford, England. He came to the United States in 1855, having interests in the textile and iron industries in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. In about 1860 he settled in Sandusky, Ohio, where he became one of the incorporators of the Sandusky Tool Company, founded in 1869..

Mr. Marshall and his wife, the former Clara Robinson, were the parents of four children: Joseph Marshall, who moved west; Mary Elizabeth Marshall, the wife of Lewis Moss; Hannah Sophia Marshall, who married Rush Sloane, and sadly died in 1872; and Benjamin Marshall, whose death was believed to have been hastened by his experience in the 1900 flood in Galveston, Texas. Clara Robinson Marshall served on the Board of the Sandusky Library Association from 1870 to 1873.

Clara Robinson Marshall

Known as Deacon Marshall, James E. Marshall was very active in the Congregational Church in Sandusky. The Marshall family lived in this lovely Wayne Street home, built in the 1870s, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

According to the Ohio Historic Places Dictionary (State History Publications, 2008), the Marshall home was the first residence in Sandusky to be connected to the city’s new water and sewer lines. 

James E. Marshall died at the age of 98 on March 20, 1907. He and his wife were both interred at Troy, New York in the family vault at Oakwood Cemetery. Though Mr. and Mrs. Marshall were not born in Sandusky, and were not buried here, they definitely contributed greatly to the community in which they lived for over forty years.