Margaret Mulholland Marsh: Farming is Not Drama

Margaret Mulholland Marsh
possibly near her 1870 wedding

In a recent webinar, the presenter noted that the stories are often better about the scoundrels than the ancestors who lived quiet lives on the farm. We can document when the farm family members were born and died, but unless someone preserved a dramatic story about the person or they happened to leave personal records like diaries or letters, what we know today is the basic story of rural life.

Such is the tale of Margaret Mulholland Marsh. Margaret was the second of my great-grandfather Sam's five older sisters, just two years younger than the eldest, Mary Jane. Unlike many of the other Mulhollands who moved away from their original farms in Superior Township, Washtenaw, Michigan, Margaret was a farm woman her entire life who never strayed far from her roots.

Born in 1844, Margaret grew up and spent her childhood in her parents' farm home. She was able to attend school into her high school years, and may have even taught school for a year in 1868-69 before marrying George Albert Marsh, another local farmer.

George and Margaret lived on a farm that George inherited from his father who died only a few months after they were married. George's brother and youngest sister, then only twelve, stayed with them on the farm. Both moved on in the following years, leaving the couple to run the farm and have a family. When George's father was running the farm, an agricultural census showed a horse, sheep and pigs, with crops including wheat, corn, and oats.

Margaret had three known children, but only two, Fred S. Marsh and George W. Marsh, lived past infancy. The Marshes also had a foster daughter, Katherine (Kittie) Marsh Parsons, who lived with them after both her parents died in 1895. Kittie must have remained close to the family, as she appears as the informant on the death record for Fred, who never married. Son George sadly died in an electrical accident at 48 working on power lines.

Margaret died in 1905 at the age of 60 after suffering from "consumption" for three years, known today as tuberculosis. In those days it was almost always fatal. Her husband George A. survived her by 10 years, running the farm with son Fred and hired help until he died in 1915 at the age of 69. George and Margaret are buried together in the Dixboro Oak Grove cemetery, not that far from the farms where they spent their lives.

Link to download and view Marsh-Mulholland family sheet (PDF)