Harvey Marshall was born around 1824 in Ireland. He immigrated to America sometime before 1845 and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He married Elizabeth Montgomery in Philadelphia on April 26, 1845, and they had at least six children: Jacob, born around 1847; Elizabeth, born around 1851; Ella, born around 1853; Harvey, born around 1856; Sarah, born around 1858; and Sally, born around 1860. They moved to New York around 1846, but they had returned to Philadelphia by 1851. Marshall worked as a boot fitter, and by 1860, he owned $50 of personal property.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 22, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company H of the 114^th Pennsylvania Infantry. The regiment took part in the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Writing from the Fredericksburg battlefield on December 16, 1862, he thanked God that he was “safe yet,” and he urged his wife to “keep [their son] Jacop home.” His son, he observed, “do not know the horrors of war,” and if “he was to see all the men and horses carying ded he would not want to come out heare.” He was mortally wounded at Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863, and he died in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 9, 1863.

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