DR. MOSES MARSHALL, son of James, and grandson of Abraham, the emigrant (also the nephew of Humphry Marshall, the distinguished botanist), was born in West Bradford township, Chester Co., on Nov. 20, 1758. He received a tolerable education, both English and classical, and studied medicine with Dr. Nicholas Way, in Wilmington, Del., from 1776 to 1779. He had an extraordinary opportunity of being initiated into surgery in attending the British soldiers who had been wounded in the battle of Brandywine, Sept. 11, 1777, and were removed to Wilmington after that conflict.
After practicing medicine a short time, Dr. Marshall became an inmate in the family of his uncle Humphry, devoting his time and services exclusively as an aid to his uncle in the business of collecting and shipping plants and seeds to Europe. He made several long exploring journeys in that pursuit through the wilderness regions of the West and Southwest. He was a good practical botanist, well acquainted with most of our indigenous forest-trees and shrubs, and rendered valuable assistance to his uncle in preparing the "Arbustum Americanum," the earliest native botanical work in the United States.
On the 6th of April, 1796, Governor Mifflin appointed him a justice of the peace, in which office he did excellent service as a peacemaker in the community around him. In all his acts Dr. Marshall was a remarkably conscientious man, as well as a cautious, upright magistrate. Dr. Marshall discontinued the business of sending plants and seeds to Europe soon after his uncle’s death, and the old garden, though still rich in vegetation, has become, by a culpable neglect, a mere wilderness. He died Oct. 1, 1813, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.