Marshall, Thomas F.

Born: 1801-06-07 Frankfort, Kentucky

Died: 1864-09-22 Woodford County, Kentucky

Flourished: Kentucky

Thomas F. Marshall, attorney, public official, and orator, was a nephew of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. He was educated by family members in Kentucky and Virginia, then read law in the office of John J. Crittenden. Marshall was admitted to the bar and took up the legal practice in Versailles, Kentucky, in 1828. He represented Woodford County in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1832, then relocated to Louisville in 1833 and was reelected to the state legislature from that city for terms in 1835 and 1836. Marshall returned to Woodford County, which he represented in further terms in the state legislature in 1838, 1839, and 1854. He was elected as a Whig to the U.S. House of Representatives for a single term, serving from 1841 to 1843. After his term in the U.S. Congress, Marshall broke with Henry Clay and the Whig Party and ran unsuccessfully for reelection as a Democrat in 1845. Marshall served as a captain of volunteers in the Mexican War. He ultimately returned to the Whig Party, but after the party failed to select him as a candidate for U.S. Congress in 1855, Marshall moved to Chicago the following year. During his brief sojourn in Illinois, he was an active campaigner for Republican presidential candidate John C. Fremont in the campaign of 1856. He soon thereafter he returned to Kentucky. In the final years of his life, Marshall practiced law and gave speeches, and on the advent of the Civil War he publicly advocated for the Confederate cause. Marshall was celebrated as an orator, but his struggles with alcohol adversely affected his professional and political life. He fathered a child with an enslaved woman and in 1852 married Elizabeth Yost, but the marriage produced no children.

“‘Poor Tom Marshall’: Thomas F. Marshall of Kentucky,” The Filson 13 (Fall 2013), 10-13; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1448; Biographical Cyclopedia of the Commonwealth of Kentucky (Chicago: John M. Gresham, 1896), 271-72; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Woodford County, KY, 439; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 8 July 1856, 2:4; 15 August 1856, 3:1; 24 October 1856, 3:1; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 September 1856, 3:1; 22 October 1856, 3:2; The Louisville Daily Journal (KY), 28 September 1864, 2:1-2; Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, 1 April 1852, Woodford County, (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); Gravestone, Frankfort Cemetery, Frankfort, KY.