Robert MARSHALL

 

Robert MARSHALL was one of the adventurous young men who came to California in the year 1849, and in the passing years he became one of the prominent and influential business men of San Francisco, where also he was a leader in political affairs, as a liberal and progressive citizen.

 

Mr. MARSHALL was born in Nova Scotia, in 1828 but was reared from boyhood in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, where he acquired his early education.  About the time of attaining to his legal majority Mr. MARSHALL became one of the company of fifty-eight persons who chartered the schooner Civilian for the purpose of voyaging to California, where the discovery of gold had occurred shortly before.  On this little vessel Mr. MARSHALL left Boston on the 12^th of November, 1849, and it was not until 143 days later that he disembarked in San Francisco, at 3 o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, April 5, 1850.  His first impression of the city was not favorable, and he stated that “it always looked like rain,” owing to the prevailing fogs.  He soon made his way to the mining districts, and later he became foreman of the New York Ranch, near Concord is Contra Costa County.  After his return to San Francisco Mr. MARSHALL here became associated with KIMBALL in the manufacturing of buggies and wagons, and with this line of enterprise he continued his active connection for a term of years, the while he was successful alike in business and in his public-spirited but non-official service as a citizen.  He was a close friend of Captain CROWELL, who had made the voyage to California with him, and he was one of the substantial and highly respected citizens of San Francisco at the time of his death, which occurred in March, 1867, at the age of thirty-nine years.

 

The year 1855 recorded the marriage of Mr. MARSHALL and Miss Margaret CLEMENTS, who was born in the north of Ireland and who came to California in 1854, and who survived her husband a number of years.  The young couple established their home in the cottage which Mr. MARSHALL erected on a lot on Howard Street, between Third and Fourth streets, and this property later passed into the possession of their one surviving child Laura.  This property was sold by her prior to the great earthquake and fire that brought supreme disaster to San Francisco.  Miss Laura MARSHALL was born and reared in San Francisco, and here was solemnized on the 9^th of August, 1881,her marriage to George Harrison DILL.  Mr. DILL was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1842, and his mother was the first American-born white woman to settle in Missouri, to which state she accompanied a covered wagon, riding horseback from Louisville, Kentucky.

 

Mr. DILL studied in the Cumberland University and was on his way to Heidelberg, Germany, when he was induced to enter Harvard College.  During the period of the Civil war the faculty of the University advanced the examination of all Southern students and he was graduated July 22, 1861.  His sympathies were wholly with the South, and he joined the Southern army, in which he became a major.  He was imprisoned by the Northern army, but managed to escape and served the South, and he joined the Southern army, in which he became a major.  He was imprisoned by the Northern army, but managed to escape and served the South until the end of the struggle.  After the war he was one of the three men who established the Kansas City Times.  He sold his interest in this and came to California in the year 1871 and engaged in the practice of law in San Francisco for a time.  However, he later entered the mercantile business, in which he here continued successfully for a long period of years.  He passed away in October 1915. Mr. and Mrs. DILL became the parents of two children.  George Marshall DILL is a successful business man in San Francisco and is a director of the Chamber of Commerce.  His one child is a son, George Marshall Jr., Margaret, younger, of the two children of Mr. and Mrs. DILL is the wife of Carl R. THOMPSON, who was born and reared in California, and they maintain their home in San Francisco. 

 

Mr. MARSHALL was one of the first presidents of the Commercial Travelers Association in California.