4. John Marshall was born in a cabin in the northwest woods of Virginia near Germantown ( now Midland ), on September 24, 1755. The first of fifteen children of Thomas and Mary Keith Marshall. He had English, Welsh and Scottish blood in his veins. He was a distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson. John spent the first twenty years of his life near Virginia's frontier. As eldest son, John had to hunt and fish. He started to enjoy nature. Before dawn he would wake up and watch the sunrise. His father was a college-trained clergy man. Thomas wanted John to participate in public life and he knew that law profession was the right path for John. Law required an education and schooling was missing in the woods they lived in. At the age of twelve, Thomas had given John a taste of history and poetry out of a few books.
First Floor at the Statute of John Marshall, quota...
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John_Deere_4630_Tractor.jpgAt the age of fourteen, John was sent a hundred miles from home to attend a small boarding school ran by a Scotch clergy man. After a year he returned to the Marshall farm where he was tutored by lodger, another Scotch clergy man. After a year the clergy man left and John continued his studies by himself. It was close to 1775 and everyone in America knew that trouble was brewing with Great Britain. Thomas Marshall sensed there was going to be war before everyone else. In his loyalty to Virginia, Thomas Marshall was called to fight in the war as a minuteman and he knew that his eldest son would be at his side fighting with him. John had to be taught how to be a solider, so he began to teach John and to direct his study to the art of war. Throughout the colonies, other men...