James Marshall was born on October 4, 1831, in Grove, New York. His father was a veteran of the War of 1812. He grew up and attended school in New York’s Finger Lakes region, and his father died during his childhood. He began working as a teacher around 1851. Soon afterward, he joined his older brother in Akron, Ohio, where he earned a living as a clerk.

 

He enrolled at Yale University in 1853, and he graduated four years later. As an early biographer wrote, Marshall paid his way through college by “selling books during vacations.” After graduation, he began studying law in Syracuse, New York. Before long, however, he “entered into active educational and religious work.” He re-founded the local Young Men’s Christian Association, established a Sunday school, and opened a school for “girls and young women.” In 1861, he enrolled at Princeton University to study theology.

 

In the spring of 1862, he travelled to Washington, D.C., as an agent of the American Tract Society. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in June 1862, and he became an army chaplain the same month. He spent the rest of the war at Fortress Monroe. According to an early biographer, he helped provide “Christian burial to over 6,000 soldiers’ bodies.” He mustered out in April 1866.

 

He married Jeannie McNair on October 3, 1866, and he couple spent the late 1860s travelling through Europe. He studied theology in Edinburgh, Berlin, Paris, and London. He returned to the United States around 1869 and worked as a minister in Troy, New York. He moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, around 1872 and then to New York City around 1876.

 

In 1887, he became president of Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As a university historian explains, the Board of Trustees was looking “for a leader who would provide strong, authoritative guidance for the institution.” As president, Marshall was a “strict disciplinarian with an eye on the primacy of education and a notion on the way things ought to be done.” His wife died on November 21, 1892, and he passed away after a brief illness on September 11, 1896.

 

Image: James Marshall (courtesy Library of Congress)

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