Levin R. Marshall

Levin R. Marshall was born October 10, 1800, in Alexandria, Virginia.[1] His father, Henry Marshall, was from Maryland, and related to Chief Justice Marshall.[1] His maternal grandfather, Stephen Minor, was a prominent planter.[2]

Marshall started his career as a banker for the United States bank in Woodville, Mississippi.[1] In 1831, he moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he continued his work as a banker.[1] He then established his own bank, the Commercial Bank of Natchez.[1] Marshall also owned the Mansion Hotel in Natchez and worked for the commission house J. B. Byrne & Co. of New Orleans, Louisiana as well as Marshall, Reynolds, and Co. of Natchez.[1][2] In 1825, he led a group of local children to welcome Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette to Natchez.[3]

Marshall owned many cotton and sugar plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.[1][3] Indeed, he owned five plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana which spanned 14,000 acres, and 10,000 acres in Arkansas.[2] By the 1850s, he produced more than 4,000 bales of cotton every year.[2] In 1860, he owned 817 African slaves.[2] He also owned a large livestock herd.[2] For a time, Henry Wirz worked as an overseer on one of Marshall's plantations in Louisiana; Wirz would later serve in the Confederate Army as commandant of the notorious prisoner-of-war camp known as Andersonville.

In 1826, Marshall married Maria Chotard (1807–1834), the daughter of John Marie Chotard, in Woodville, Mississippi.[1] They had four children,[1] only one of whom survived: George Matthews Marshall, who later married Charlotte Hunt, the daughter of planter David Hunt, and resided at the Lansdowne Plantation.[1] A portrait of Levin R. Marshall and George M. Marshall painted by Louis Joseph Bahin hangs in the dining room at Lansdowne.[4]

After Maria's death, Marshall remarried to Sarah E. Elliott Ross, daughter of Dr. Elliott and widow of Isaac Ross.[1] They had eight children.[1] They resided at Richmond in Natchez[3] and also maintained a residence in Westchester County, New York.[1]

Marshall died on July 24, 1870, at the age of 69.[1]