486 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



were both interred in the Friends' burying-ground, at Bradford 

 meeting-house, which meeting they had been mainly instrumental 

 in establishing. Throughout their long lives, they had been truly 

 useful and exemplary members of society, Abraham, moreover, 

 having been for many years an approved minister among Friends, 

 as is attested by a Collection of Memorials, published by the So- 

 ciety in 1787. Abraham and Mary Marshall had seven sons 

 and two daughters. Of these nine children, Humphry was the 

 eighth. In those primitive times, the opportunities for school- 

 learning, in Chester County, were scanty and limited. The children 

 of the early settlers were, from necessity, kept at home and put to 

 hard work, as soon as they had acquired sufficient muscular strength 

 to be serviceable. Humphry Marshall used often to state, that, 

 he never went to school a day, after he was twelve years of age ; 

 and consequently, was instructed only in the rudiments of the 

 plainest English education. Being constitutionally robust and 

 active, he was employed in agricultural labours until he was old 

 enough to be apprenticed to the business of a stone-mason. This 

 trade he learned, and followed, for a few years, during the summer 

 season, extending his engagements, occasionally, into the county 

 and town of Lancaster, and also into the neighbouring province of 



at Philadelphia, with her parents, about the year 1684, and settled at Kingsessing 

 Township ; was married on the 17th of the 1st month, 1702-3, to Abraham Mar- 

 shall, who was born in Derbyshire, and arrived in this country about the year 

 1697, as appears by letters from thence ; and, soon after they were married, re- 

 moved to the Forks of Brandywine, where they lived together in love until the 

 17th day of the 12th month, 1767, having been married sixty-four years and nine 

 months ; when he departed this life, by the generally-supposed account, in the 

 07th year of his age, but by John Grattan's Journal, 103 ; having been a public 

 minister amongst the people called Quakers, from the eighteenth year of his age. 

 He was not more conspicuous for his zeal and indefatigable labour in the Gospel, 

 than for rectitude of life, which, with a meek and humble deportment, adorned 

 the doctrine he preached. The patience and Christian fortitude, manifested in 

 his last tedious illness, evidenced his subjection to the will of God ; and the serenity 

 of spirit with which he met the messenger of death, being sensible of his approach- 

 ing change, gives just ground to hope, that he now experiences the verity of that 

 sacred truth, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, -for henceforth they rest from 

 'heir labours, and their works folloio them. Although they lived to such an advanced 

 age, and departed quiet and easy, their children can truly say, that it hath been 

 very afflicting to part with such good and pious exemplary parents. She was at- 

 tended to her funeral, on the 6th of the 3d month, 1769, by a large number of 

 her friends and relatives ; at which time and place, being met by the corpse of 

 Phebe Hadlet, an ancient minister, and a number of friends attending thereon, 

 the solemn time and occasion must be remembered for years to come, by some." 



