Note 4 — Chapter I · HIS LIFE BEFORE BECOMING CHIEF JUSTICE; HIS PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

It may be added that Thomas Marshall, father of the Chief Justice, was the son of John Marshall, called “of the Forest,” from the name of his place in Westmoreland County. Of this John it is said, in a little autobiography of the Chief Justice of some five hundred words, preserved in Mr. Justice Gray’s valuable oration at Richmond, on February 4, 1901, that his “parents migrated from Wales and settled in the county of Westmoreland in Virginia.” The will of “Thomas Marshall carpenter,” proved May 31, 1704, describing himself as of Westmoreland County, is printed in the Virginia Magazine of History, ii. 343, 344; and it is there stated in a note that this Thomas “was the first of his race in America.” On the other hand, we are told by an intelligent writer in Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography, and elsewhere, that the father of “John of the Forest” was Thomas, born in Virginia in 1655, who died in 1704; and that it was his father, John, a captain of cavalry in the service of Charles I., who emigrated to Virginia about 1650.