Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1886 — The Candidate for Prosecutor. [ARTICLE]

The Candidate for Prosecutor.

R. W. MARSHALL.

Mr. Marshall is a thorough bred western man, having been horn in the county of Will, in the state of Illinois, in the year 1842. His ancestors wfcfe regular old “Down East” Yankees, from Connecticut. He was horn a "Black Republican," This father and grandfather having been officers in one of the very first Abolition societies ever ’organized' in Illinois, aud their house a well known station of one of the branches of the famous ’’Underground Railroad" of ante-war days. When Mr. Marshall was about 8 years old his father died, leaving a very large family of young children, who were thus brought up in the seven' Iu! s nnetimes salutary school of poverty and hardship. He received aTaiFTlommon school - educa-~ tion. howeyer. At the breaking out of the war, though but 19 years old, he joined one of the first regiments organized in the state, and served the term for which he enlisted, three months. The year following he joined another Illinois regiment, and was made a noncommissioned officer in the same. After many months of hard service, he was brought to the brink of death by an attack of typhoid fever, occasioned by the hardships of that dreadful campaign in Kentucky and Tennesee, of Buell against Bragg. and was discharged, seemingly ruined in health. When, through the native strength of his constitution he was finally restored to health, he enlisted for the third time and was jnade

First Lieutenant of his company, and later-placed in command of another con pany. At the close of the war he took a full course in Bryant & Stratton’s Business College, in Chicago; and then went west, but returned after a few years and in 1870, when 28 years old, was elected Sheriff of his county. It was duiing this term of office that he first began the study of law. At the close of his term of office he engaged heavily in dealing in real estate in the then rapidly growing city of Joliet, with great success for a time, but the panic of 78 and the long years of depression which followed were disastrous to him, in a financial point of view, and in 1878 he removed to the northern part of the county, in this state; and engaged in the business of raising cattle. Without effort and almost without intention upon his psfrt, he drifted the practice of the law and with such marked success that for years scarcely a case, of any kind, bad been tried in the northern half of Jasper and Newton counties, in which he*' has not appeared as attorney upon one side or the other. It is an excellent .evidence not only of his abilities as an attorney, •but of his great personal popularity that the republicans of the entire northern portions of the counties of Jasper and Newton, the men who knew him best, were enthusiastic in his favor, almost to a man. He is thoroughly familiar with the criminal laws of the state, and with the details of the office for which he is a candidate. As a man and a citizen he is a thoroughly moral, temperate, and upright man, and those who have been his nearest neighbors for years, are those who esteem his virtues the highest.