Basye, Marshall

Born: 1808-XX-XX Paris, Kentucky

Died: 1860-12-23 Texas

Alternate name: Basey

Marshall Basye was a Whig, merchant, and farmer. He married Margaret Mary Thornton in 1833. Margaret was the daughter of prominent Shelbyville, Illinois merchant William F. Thornton. She and Basye eventually had at least five children together. Between 1834 and 1839, he purchased several hundred acres of public land in Shelby County, Illinois. Basye was a member of the local Whig Party at least as early as 1840, but did not remain in Illinois. In 1850, he was a merchant in a gold-mining camp on the Cosumnes River in Eldorado County, California. By 1860, however, he had relocated to Dallas, Texas and was working as a farmer. He was still financially stable, owning just under $10,000 in both real and personal property. He died in Dallas.

Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, 14 September 1833, Bourbon County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); For an exhaustive list of Basye's land purchases, search "Basye Marshall" and "Basye Marshall M.," https://www.ilsos.gov/isa/landsrch.jsp; Shelby County Ancestors 18 (July 1996): 24; Daniel W. Stowell et al., eds., The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 2:355; Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 5 June 1840, 3:5; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Eldorado County, CA, 357; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Shelby County, ed. by George D. Chafee (Chicago: Munsell, 1910), 2:997; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Dallas County, TX, 27.