Author: Marshall, Thomas
Biography:
MARSHALL, Thomas (1806-66: findmypast.com)
The most detailed account of Marshall’s life and work is that issued in 1872 and revised in 1891 for Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings, but it can now be supplemented by public documents. Thomas Marshall was born on Silver Street, Newcastle, on 8 Feb. 1806 and baptised on 8 June 1806. His parents Elizabeth and Thomas Marshall registered his birth as nonconformist (Independent or Congregational) but Marshall appears as an adult to have conformed and was an active member of the Anglican congregation of All Saints, where he became one of the bellringers. He was apprenticed to a brush maker named Laidler and was employed in his master’s shop, and its successor Byers and Co., for the rest of his life. All his published songs belong to his early working years: he is said to have broken into song while at his work. On 10 Sept. 1827 he married Margaret Young (b c. 1800), of the same parish, at All Saints. Allan’s suggests that they had one son who predeceased him, for whom no baptismal record has been located; there is however a record of a child named Elizabeth (like his mother) baptised at All Saints on 2 Nov. 1828, who may have died young. Marshall signed his regular pay-sheet on 29 Dec. 1866 and died at home on Shield Street of a “paralytic stroke” on 31 Dec.; he was buried at All Saints on 2 Jan. 1867. No record of burial has been found for his wife Margaret but they were living together at the time of the 1861 census. (findmypast.com 15 Feb. 2024; ancestry.com 15 Feb. 2024; Allan’s Illustrated Edition of Tyneside Songs and Readings [rev. ed. 1891], 250-56) HJ