OBITUARY NOTICES. 
MARCUS BAKER. 
1849-1903. 
[Read before the Society, February 18, 1905.] 
The subject of this memoir was bom on a farm near Kal¬ 
amazoo, Michigan, September 23,1849. One of his ancestors 
on the father’s side settled near Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1630, 
but from what part of England he came is not recorded. 
The father of Marcus Baker was John Baker, born at West- 
hampton, Massachusetts, November 20, 1814, and who died 
at Kalamazoo July 3, 1883. He came to Kalamazoo about 
1837, and some ten years later married Chastina Fobes, or 
Forbes, born at Mexico, New York, August 4, 1824. John 
Baker, like many of the pioneers, lived chiefly by his farm, 
but turned his hand to various things; was interested in 
politics and at one time sheriff of the county in which Kal¬ 
amazoo is the chief town. For many years after the popu¬ 
lation had passed the number which was regarded as entitling 
the people to ask for a city charter Kalamazoo retained the 
village form of government, and was proud of being the 
largest village, in a legal sense, in the United States. The 
greater interest in public affairs incited by the simpler gov¬ 
ernment, in which every adult citizen might at town meet¬ 
ing express his opinion on any proposed measure, may have 
had something to do with the high average intelligence of 
the community, in which a local college, still flourishing, 
was established at an early date. 
Marcus Baker was the third child of his parents, and at 
the usual age attended the district school and later the 
Kalamazoo public schools and the preparatory school of 
Kalamazoo College. He entered the latter institution in 
(277) 
39—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 14. 
