history, but
also to every American patriot, to study his career and to acquaint
himself with that combination of traits and accidents by which his
character and course in life were determined.

John Marshall was born Sept. 24, 1755, in Fauquier County, Virginia, at
a small village then called Germantown, but now known as Midland, a
station on the Southern Railway not far south of Manassas. His
grandfather, John Marshall, the first of the family of whom there
appears to be any record, was an emigrant from Wales. He left four sons,
the eldest of whom was Thomas Marshall, the father of the Chief Justice.
Thomas Marshall, though a man of meagre early education, possessed great
natural gifts, and rendered honorable and useful public service both as
a member of the Virginia Legislature, and as a soldier in the
Revolutionary War, in which he rose to the rank of colonel. His son,
John Marshall, was the eldest of fifteen children. Of his mother, whose
maiden name was Keith, little is known, but it has been well observed by
one of Marshall's biographers, that, as she reared her fifteen
children--seven sons and eight daughters--all to mature years, she could
have had little opportunity to make any other record for herself, and
could hardly have made a better one.

Subsequently to his birth, Marshall's parents removed to an estate
called Oak Hill, in the western part of Fauquier County. It was here
that in 1775, when nineteen years of age, he heard the call of his
country and entered the patriot army as a lieutenant. We have of him at
this time the first personal description, written by a kinsman who was
an eye-witness of the scene, and preserved in the eulogy delivered by
Mr. Binney before the Select and Common Councils of Philadelphia on
Sept. 24, 1835. "His figure," says the writer, "I have now before me. He
was about six feet high, straight and rather slender, of dark
complexion, showing little if any rosy red, yet good health, the outline
of the face nearly a circle, and within that, eyes dark to blackness,
strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature; an
upright forehead, rather low, was terminated in a horizontal line by a
mass of raven-black hair of unusual thickness and strength; the features
of the face were in harmony with this outline, and the temples fully
developed. The result of this combination was interesting and very
agreeable. The body and limbs indicated agility rather than strength, in