Railroad, Interurban, & Stagecoach Road
Surveyors in the early 1800s enlarged the St. Joseph Indian trail, originally only about a foot wide, to create the Saint Joseph Road.
Brooks
In 1912, Harold C. Brooks took over his father’s business, Brooks Rupture Appliance Company.
Harold Brooks
The company manufactured appliances (ie. special cushions) for people, mainly men, suffering from hernias. These cushions held the ruptured muscle or tissue in place to alleviate hernia pain in the era before hernia surgery was developed.
Mr. Brooks invested much of the money he made in the business back into the town, purchasing and then donating many historic buildings and land to the city and saving much of his hometown for future generations to enjoy.
For the centennial celebration in 1930, he paid for the renovation of many key structures and gave Brooks Memorial Fountain to the city.
More History
Underground Railroad & Crosswhite
In 1846, slave catchers tried to capture escaped slave Adam Crosswhite and his family in Marshall to return them to their owner in Kentucky. Instead, the citizens of Marshall arrested the slave…
Education Oak
A stately oak was the location chosen by the Rev. John Pierce and Isaac Crary for their discussions of the founding of the education system for the territory that was to become…
National Historic Landmark District
The Marshall Historic District comprises an outstanding collection of remarkably intact nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture in a small-scale American city.