San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JOSEPH C. MARSHALL
A vineyardist of exceptional
experience, the outcome of varied and successful enterprise, is Joseph C.
Marshall, better known as Charles Marshall, and in business matters usually
signified as J. C. Marshall, a native of Washington, Pennsylvania, and now residing
on his ranch at the corner of Cherokee Lane and the Galt-Elliott Road, some
seven miles north of Lodi. He was born
on March 8, 1878, a son of Frederick and Elizabeth (Clark) Marshall, natives of
Somersetshire, England, who reached America on the sailing vessel
“Underwriter,” only after surviving three shipwrecks. Frederick Marshall was a coal miner in
England. He was an orphan, who worked
his way up, step by step, until he became a coal operator in the Pennsylvania
mines. In early life he belonged to that
class of heroic workmen, laboring under the most trying of conditions, to whom society owes so much for its advancement as well as for
its very preservation. He became
well-to-do and operated his coal mine on Chartiers
Creek, in Pennsylvania, but when the Johnstown flood came, it flooded his mine
and ruined him financially. Ten
children, five boys and five girls, made up the family of Mr. and Mrs.
Marshall; and owing to the large number to be fed and clothed J. C. Marshall
early did what he could to aid his parents, and from his eighteenth year made
his way alone in the world.
He first became an iron-molder in
Pennsylvania, and later removed to Ohio; then he went to the Mannington, West
Virginia, oil fields and became a driller.
In 1908 he reached California, and for the next ten years he was at
Maricopa in the west side oil fields of Kern County. He then went to Desdemona, Texas, and later
went to Oklahoma and was in the Duke Field soon after going to Texas, where he
worked in the Desdemona oilfields as a driller.
At Washington, Pennsylvania, on
April 17, 1900, Mr. Marshall was married to Miss Ellen McClain, a native of
that same district, the daughter of Samuel and Clara McClain, and of
Scotch-Irish descent. One of a family of
six children, she was reared at Washington, Pennsylvania, and there attended
the grammar school, the high school, and business college. From Duke, Oklahoma, Mr. Marshall returned to
California on December 1, 1920. He had a
ranch of twenty acres on the Cherokee Lane Road, about six miles north of Lodi;
and having sold that about a year ago, he purchased
the old John Quiggle ranch at the corner of the Galt-Elliott Road and Cherokee
Lane. This ranch has a vineyard of
eleven acres on it, and is amply irrigated from an independent pumping plant
owned by Mr. Marshall, who likewise maintains a small dairy there.
Two children were born in the
Marshall household. Elizabeth has become
Mrs. Harry Dart, of Sacramento; and Grace is the wife of Earl Dart, of
Sacramento, both girls having married brothers.
Elizabeth has one son, Marshall Dart, born November 18, 1921. Mr. Marshall is a member of Masonic Lodge No.
267, of Galt.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1008. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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