Levin R. Marshall

Levin R. Marshall
From They found it in Natchez (1939) by Theodora Britton Marshall
BornOctober 10, 1800
Alexandria, Virginia
DiedJuly 24, 1870(1870-07-24) (aged 69)
OccupationsBanker, planter
Spouses
  • Maria Chotard Marshall
  • Sarah E. Elliott Ross Marshall
Children12, including George Matthews Marshall
ParentHenry Marshall
RelativesStephen Minor (grandfather)

Levin R. Marshall (October 10, 1800 – July 24, 1870) was an American banker and planter in the Antebellum South. He was a founder and President of the Commercial Bank of Natchez, Mississippi. He owned 14,000 acres in Mississippi and Louisiana, and 10,000 acres in Arkansas.

Early life

Levin R. Marshall was born October 10, 1800, in Alexandria, Virginia.[1] His father, Henry Marshall, was from Maryland, and was some relation to Chief Justice John Marshall.[1] His maternal grandfather, Stephen Minor, was a prominent planter.[2]

Career

Marshall was said to have come to Wilkinson County, Mississippi Territory in 1817.[3] Marshall started his career as a banker for the United States bank in Woodville, Mississippi.[1] In 1831, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he continued his work as a banker, serving as cashier of the local branch of the Second Bank of the United States.[1][3] He then established his own bank, the Commercial Bank of Natchez.[1] Marshall also owned the Mansion Hotel in Natchez and worked for the commission house J. B. Byrne & Co. of New Orleans, Louisiana as well as Marshall, Reynolds, and Co. of Natchez.[1][2] In 1825, he led a group of local children to welcome Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette to Natchez.[4]

Marshall owned many cotton and sugar plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.[1][4] Indeed, he owned five plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana which spanned 14,000 acres, and 10,000 acres in Arkansas.[2] Marshall was one of the South's largest slaveholders; in 1850, Marshall enslaved 629 people held in four counties in three states.[5]

By the 1850s, he produced more than 4,000 bales of cotton every year.[2] In 1860, he owned 817 African slaves.[2] He also owned a large livestock herd.[2] For a time, Henry Wirz worked as an overseer on one of Marshall's plantations in Louisiana; Wirz would later serve in the Confederate Army as commandant of the notorious prisoner-of-war camp known as Andersonville.

Personal life

Death

Marshall died on July 24, 1870, at the age of 69.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Goodspeed's. Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi: Volume II, Part II. Pelican Publishing. p. 397. ISBN 978-1-4556-0119-6.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 D. Clayton James, Antebellum Natchez, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1968, p. 155
  3. 1 2 3 Rothstein (1979), p. 79.
  4. 1 2 3 Historic Resources Inventory: Richmond
  5. ↑ Scarborough, William Kauffman (2012). Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press. p. 429. ISBN 9780807156001. LCCN 2003007301. OCLC 846496079. Project MUSE book 23668.
  6. ↑ Lansdowne Plantation: Tour
  7. ↑ Mulvihill (1946), p. 22.

Sources

  • Mulvihill, Lelia H. (1946). Private Cemeteries in Adams County, Mississippi (Reprint ed.). Salem, Massachusetts: Higginson Book Company.
  • Rothstein, Morton (1979). "The Changing Social Networks and Investment Behavior of a Slaveholding Elite in the Ante Bellum South: Some Natchez Nabobs, 1800–1860". In Greenfield, Sidney M.; Strickon, Arnold; Aubey, Robert T. (eds.). Entrepreneurs in Cultural Context. School of American Research, Advanced Seminar Series. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. pp. 65–88. ISBN 978-0-8263-0504-6. LCCN 78021433. OCLC 4859059.
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