on this occasion was largely due to the good conduct of Col. Marshall and his command. The house of burgesses voted him a sword. At Germantown his regiment covered the retreat of the patriot army. He was with Washington at Valley Forge. He was afterward ordered to the south, and was surrendered by Gen. Lincoln at Charleston in 1780. When paroled he took advantage of the circumstance to make his first visit to Kentucky on horseback over the mountains, and then located the lands on which he subsequently lived in Woodford. Having been exchanged, he resumed his command and held it until the close of the war. In 1781 he was for a time in command at York. He was appointed surveyor-general of the lands in Kentucky in 1783, in that year established his office in Lexington, and removed his family to Kentucky in 1785. In 1787 and 1788 he represented Fayette county in the Virginia assembly. In the latter year he was also a delegate to the convention in Danville to consider the separation of Kentucky from Virginia. He was appointed by Washington collector of revenue for Kentucky. He and all his family were Federalists. —
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The second Thomas's eldest son, John, jurist, b. in Germantown, Fauquier co., Va., 24 Sept., 1755; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 6 July, 1835, received from childhood a thorough course of domestic education in English literature, and when he was sufficiently advanced his father procured the services of a private teacher, Rev. James Thompson, an Episcopal clergyman from Scotland, who was afterward minister of Leeds parish. At fourteen years of age John was sent to Westmoreland county, and placed at the school where his father and Washington had been pupils. James Monroe was one of his fellow-students. After remaining there for a year he returned to Oak Hill and continued his classical studies under the direction of Mr. Thompson, but he never had the benefit of a college education. He began the study of law at the age of eighteen, and used Blackstone's “Commentaries,” then recently published, but he had hardly begun his legal studies when the controversy with the mother country came to a crisis. The tea bill, the Boston port bill, the congress of 1774, followed one another in quick succession, and every question at issue was thoroughly discussed at Oak Hill just at the period of young Marshall's life to make the most indelible impression upon his intellectual and moral character. Military preparations were not neglected. John Marshall joined an independent body of volunteers and devoted himself with much zeal to the training of a company of militia in his neighborhood. Among the first to take the field was Thomas Marshall. A regiment of minutemen was raised in the summer of 1775 in Culpeper, Orange, and Fauquier counties, of which he was appointed major, and his son John a lieutenant. On their green hunting-shirts they bore the motto “Liberty or death!” and on their banner was the emblem of a coiled rattlesnake, with the inscription “Don't tread on me!” They were armed with rifles, knives, and tomahawks. They had an engagement with Gov. Dunmore's forces at Great Bridge on 9 Dec., in which Lieut. Marshall showed coolness and skill in handling his men. After this, in 1776, the father and son were in separate organizations. Thomas Marshall was appointed colonel in the 3d Virginia infantry of the Continental line, and John's company was reorganized and attached to the 11th regiment of Virginia troops, which was sent to join Washington's army in New Jersey. Both were in most of the principal battles of the war until the end of 1779. John was promoted to a captaincy in May, 1779. His company distinguished itself at the battle of the Brandywine. He was engaged in the pursuit of the British and the subsequent retreat at Germantown, was with the army in winter-quarters at Valley Forge, and took part in the actions at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Paulus Hook. His marked good sense and discretion and his general popularity often led to his being selected to settle disputes between his brother officers, and he was frequently employed to act as deputy judge-advocate. This brought him into extensive acquaintance with the officers, and into personal intercourse with Gen. Washington and Col. Alexander Hamilton, an acquaintance that subsequently ripened into sincere regard and attachment. The term of enlistment of his regiment having expired, Capt. Marshall, with other supernumerary officers, was ordered to Virginia to take charge of any new troops that might be raised by the state, and while he was detained in Richmond during the winter of 1779-'80, awaiting the action of the legislature, he availed himself of the opportunity to attend the law lectures of George Wythe, of William and Mary college, and those of Prof. (afterward Bishop) Madison on natural philosophy. In the summer of 1780 Marshall received a license to practise law, but, on the invasion of Virginia by Gen. Alexander Leslie in October, he joined the army again under Baron Steuben, and remained in the service until Arnold, after his raid on James river, had retired to Portsmouth. This was in January, 1781. He then resigned his commission, and studied law.
He had spent nearly six years in arduous military service, exposed to the dangers, enduring the hardships, and partaking the anxieties of that trying period. The discipline of those six years could not have failed to strengthen the manliness of his character and greatly enlarge his knowledge of the chief men, or those who became such, from every part of the country, and of their social and political principles. Though it was a rough and severe school, it was instructive, and produced a maturity and self-dependence that could not have been acquired by a much longer experience under different circumstances. As soon as the courts were re-opened young Marshall began practice, and quickly rose to high distinction at the bar. In the spring of 1782 he was elected to the house of burgesses, and in the autumn a member of the state executive council. On 3 Jan., 1783, he married Mary Willis Ambler, daughter of the state treasurer, with whom he lived for nearly fifty years, and about the same time he took up his permanent residence in Richmond. In the spring of 1784 he resigned his seat at the council board in order to devote himself more exclusively to his profession, but he was immediately returned to the legislature by Fauquier county, though he retained only a nominal residence there. In 1787 he was elected to represent Henrico, which includes the city of Richmond. He was a decided advocate of the new U. S. constitution, and in 1788 was elected to the state convention that was called to consider