Author: Marsh, William
Biography:
MARSH, William (1732-1824: ancestry.com)
Not to be confused with nor apparently even of the same family as the famous William Marsh, Vermont patriot and United Empire Loyalist (1738-1816), like him the poet was a patriot and a soldier: he served as a Private in Captain Comfort Starr's Company from Guilford VT during the Revolutionary War. The son of Esther (Osborne) and Jonathan Marsh, he was probably born in Sutton MA, where he married Rachel Coates in 1756. They moved first to Killingly CT, where seven of their twelve children were born, then--about 1768--to Guilford, where they had five more. One of the two sons whose deaths he mourns in his volume of verse was born in Killingly, the other in Guilford. There are no other known publications. He died and is buried in Guilford. (Information provided by the Bennington Museum; ancestry.com 12 Feb. 2020; Official History of Guilford, Vermont 1678-1961 [1961], 174; Jennifer S. H. Brown and Wilson B. Brown, Col. William Marsh: Vermont Patriot and Loyalist [2010])