BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



OF 



HUMPHRY MARSHALL. 



Humphry Marshall was bom in the township of West Brad- 

 ford, County of Chester, and province of Pennsylvania,* on the 

 10th day of October, 1722. His father, Abraham Marshall, was 

 a native of Gratton, in Derbyshire, England, born in the year 1669, 

 came to Pennsylvania about the year 1697, and settled near Darby, 

 where, on the 17th of January, 1702-3, he married Mary, the 

 daughter of James Hunt, of Kingsessing, also an emigrant from 

 England, and one of the companions of William Penn. Some 

 time after his marriage, viz., in the year 1707, Abraham Marshall 

 removed to the forks of the Brandywine, near the western branch 

 of that stream, where he purchased large tracts of land, among the 

 Indians, and continued to reside until his death, which took place 

 December 17th, 1767, at the age of about ninety-eight years. His 

 wife died in the spring of 1769, aged eighty-seven years. f They 



* It is curious to remark the state of information, among certain book-maker- 

 on the other side of the Atlantic, respecting the Author of the first indigenous trea- 

 tise upon American Plants. For instance, De Theis, in his Glossaire de Botanique, 

 published in 1810, mentions him as " H. Marshall, Anglois, dont on a eu, en 177* 

 [1785], l'Histoire naturelle des Arbres et Arbustes de l'Amerique septentrionale." 

 And in Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants, he is spoken of as " Hmry Marshall, an 

 Englishman, author of a sort of history of the Trees and Shrubs of North America, 

 published in 1778" ! 



f The following note (in the handwriting of Htjmphby Marshall, eighty years 

 since), is still preserved among the Marshall Papery. 



" On the 4th of this instant [March, 1769], departed this life, in the eighty- 

 seventh year of her age, Mary Marshall. Born in Kent, in old England ; arrived 



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