Tuolumne County Biographies

HONORABLE EDWARD C. MARSHALL

Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


In a previous part of this work reference has been made to a speech delivered in 
Sonora in early days by Captain E. C. Marshall, which had the effect, it is 
said, of inclining the County of Tuolumne to the side of the Democracy rather 
than to that of the Whigs.  Men who heard that speech and who were conversant 
with the acts of the speaker, knowing of his penetrat�ing intellect, ready and 
forcible delivery, and rapid and incisive thought, could have prophesied, as 
many did, a future career which should stamp the author as a man of no common 
merit and importance.  The promise given in Sonora in early times has been 
fulfilled.  The Court of justice, the halls of legislation, and the political 
arena, have heard the telling eloquence of that voice, and scarcely a single 
inhabitant of this region but has heard the name and knows somewhat of the 
reputation of Hon. E. C. Mar�shall.
This distinguished gentleman is of the celebrated Mar�shalls of Kentucky, a 
family that has produced many per�sons of eminence, his brother, Tom Marshall, 
being of national reputation.  General Humphrey Marshall is an�other name of 
celebrity which pertains to this family.
The subject of this memoir was born in Woodford, Ken�tucky, in June, 1821.  
Attending Centre College for a time, he afterwards graduated from Transylvania 
University at Lexington.  At the former institution he met the afterwards 
celebrated statesman and soldier, John C. Breckinridge, with whom he 
participated in the Mexican war, taking part in all the battles in which General 
Scott�s command engaged subsequent to the capture of Vera Cruz.
Arriving in California in 1849, via New Mexico and Arizona, he reached San 
Francisco in November, where he remained until May of the following year, when 
he pro�ceeded to Sonora, there settling amid engaging in the practice of his 
profession of the law.  Captain Marshall at once took the prominent position to 
which his abilities en�titled him, and turning his attention to politics was 
elected to Congress in the year 1851.  This office he filled with the most 
marked  ability; returning at the end of his term to enter upon the practice of 
the law at Marysville.  In 1856, Mr. Marshall became a candidate for the 
position of United States Senator, but not being successful in the canvass he 
removed to Kentucky, and eschewing politics, devoted himself to legal pursuits.  
For twenty-one years he pursued his chosen calling with the greatest success, 
demonstrating upon occasion those rare oratorical abilities which have given him 
so much prominence.  Even a slight allusion to each of those occasions when his 
voice has been eloquently raised at the bar, or in the presence of enlight�ened 
and applauding audiences, would consume more space than can here be spared.  
It is enough to say that even among the favored orators of his native State, there 
is no one who stands his superior in the art of convincing and logical oratory.
Proceeding with this brief epitome of the gentleman's brilliant career, we note 
his return to California in 1877, and his transference to the bar of San 
Francisco of those qualities which had made his previous fame.  Since his return 
to this coast, he has, taken high rank among the numerous gifted legal minds of 
that city, and has on many occasions asserted the supremacy of his ripe 
intelligence as attorney in some of the most important cases ever brought to 
trial in California.  As counsel for the People in the Kalloch-DeYoung homicide 
and in the contest of the Mint Investigation, where Mr. Marshall acted as 
attorney for General La Grange, his merits show forth conspicuous.
So well have the particular merits of the gentleman been recognized, that he 
became the nominee of the Democratic party for the elevated and responsible 
office of Attorney General of the State of California, at the convention held in 
San Jose in June, 1882.
Mr. Marshall�s domestic relations have been singularly felicitous Marrying, in 
November, 1852, Miss Josephine Chalfant, of Cincinnati, Ohio, a reigning belle 
of the West, his household now contains the wedded pair, together with three 
children Louis, Fayette and Eleanor.

�A History of Tuolumne Co, CA� B.F. Alley, 1882.  Appendix pg. 32-36.