Marshall, Michigan

Marshall is a city in and the county seat of Calhoun County, Michigan. The population was 6,822 at the 2020 census.

Marshall is best known for its cross-section of 19th- and early 20th-century architecture and as the future home of Ford Motor Company's BlueOval Battery Park. It has been referred to by the keeper of the National Register of Historic Places as a "virtual textbook of 19th-Century American architecture." Its historic center is the Marshall Historic District, one of the nation's largest architecturally significant National Historic Landmark Districts. The Landmark has over 850 buildings, including the Honolulu House.

The town was founded by Sidney Ketchum (1797–1862) in 1830, a land surveyor born in Clinton County, New York, in conjunction with his brother, George Ketchum (1794-1853). The Ketchum brothers explored central lower Michigan in 1830, and in late 1830, Sidney Ketchum obtained government grants for the land on which most of Marshall now stands. The early settlers named the community in honor of Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall from Virginia—whom they greatly admired. This occurred five years before Marshall's death and thus was the first of dozens of communities and counties named for him. The village of Marshall was incorporated March 28, 1836.

Marshall was thought to be the frontrunner for state capital, so much so that a Governor's Mansion was built. However, the town lost, along with Lyons, Michigan, by a Yea/Nay vote count of 29-32 against Lansing's 35-27 (11 vote difference). In the years thereafter, Marshall became known for its patent medicine industry until the Pure Drug Act of 1906. Marshall was involved in the Underground Railroad. When escaped slave Adam Crosswhite fled Kentucky and settled in Marshall with his wife and three children, the people of the town hid him from the posse sent to retrieve him. Those involved were tried in Federal Court and found guilty of denying a man his rightful property. This case and others like it caused the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to be pushed through Congress.

In 1843, Adam Crosswhite, his wife Sarah and their four children ran away from Francis Giltner's plantation in Hunter's Bottom, Carroll County, Kentucky because the Crosswhites learned that one of their four children was to be sold. The Crosswhites made the tough journey north through Indiana along the Underground Railroad, beginning in Madison, Indiana. They finally settled in Marshall, where they were accepted, and Adam worked and built a cabin.

In response to increasing numbers of runaway slaves, a coalition of slave owners in the north central counties and the Bluegrass region of Kentucky organized to recover the runaways. In January 1846, Francis Giltner's son David Giltner and three others went to Marshall to capture the Crosswhite family.

On the morning of January 26, 1847, as the slave catchers and a local deputy sheriff were pounding on Adam's door, his neighbors heard the noise and came running. The cry of "slave catchers!" was yelled through the streets of Marshall. Soon, over 100 people surrounded the Crosswhite home.

Threats were shouted back and forth. One of the slave catchers began to demand that people in the crowd give him their names. They were proud to tell him and even told him the correct spelling. Each name was written down in a little book. Finally, the deputy sheriff, swayed by the crowd's opinion, decided he should arrest the men from Kentucky instead. Marshall townspeople hid the Crosswhites in the attic of George Ingersoll's mill. By the time the slave catchers could post bond and get out of jail, Isaac Jacobs, the hostler at the Marshall House, had hired a covered wagon and driven the Crosswhites to Jackson where they boarded a train to Detroit and then crossed over into Canada.