In the blog post “People of Niagara County: Othniel Charles Marsh (Part 1)“, I mentioned that I reached out to the Niagara County Historian’s Office for more information on Othniel Charles Marsh. They shared with me over 30 pages of information on Othniel and his family. I want to thank them and also to remind everyone of what a wonderful resource the Niagara County Historian’s Office is. If you are on Facebook, you can follow their page here: https://www.facebook.com/Niagara-County-Historians-Office-299057299891/?v=wall.
Here is a little more research that I conducted about Othniel and his family based off of some of the many pages of information that the Niagara County Historian’s Office shared with me:
- Charles Schuchert and Clara Mae LeVene wrote a 541 page book titled: O.C. Marsh, Pioneer in Paleontology in 1940 published by Yale University Press. The Niagara County Historian’s Office has wonderful a 9-page narrative about the Marsh family which, I believe, includes information from the Schuchert and LeVene book.
- Here is a link to the book on WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/547401.
- Othniel’s father, Caleb Marsh, first purchased land in the Town of Lockport on Chestnut Ridge Rd. in 1826. This was the first of a few purchases in the area. The Niagara County deed volumes 1-2 are not digitized and included in the FamilySeach collection United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975, so we cannot look at the original 1826 deed online, but the index can be seen here: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99WN-PXG1?i=318&wc=M7HT-TM3%3A358133301%2C358654101&cc=2078654.
- After Othniel’s mother’s death in 1834, Othniel’s father, Caleb Marsh placed a long advertisement in the Niagara Courier in September 1834 (based off of the documents shared with me from the Niagara County Historian’s Office) to sell his property and all the farm equipment with it. I could not find the Niagara Courier digitized online, so I looked on the Library of Congress (LoC) website to learn more about it and what libraries and repositories held copies of it: https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83031409/. The Niagara County Historian’s Office is listed as a repository that holds the Niagara Courier (though I can’t tell from the LoC website if they have issues from 1834 that would have listed the advertisement).
- You can see where Othniel’s father, Caleb Marsh had the Chestnut Ridge Rd. property in this 1852 map of Niagara County found on the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3803n.la000522/.
- Othniel’s father, Caleb, brought other properties, too:
- The 1855 New York State Census is quite blurry on both FamilySearch and Ancestry but I did find the Marsh family at the bottom of page 5 and the top of page 6: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBPB-ZQX?i=4&cc=1937366.
The above was just a small portion of research that could be done on Othniel. If you are interested in conducting further research on Othniel Charles Marsh, don’t forget to contact the Niagara County Historian’s Office for more information on him!
Jeanette Sheliga is the Niagara County (NY) Genealogical Society’s (NCGS) Chairman of the Board, Vice President, NGS Delegate, and Program Chairperson. She is a member of many local and national organizations and holds leadership positions with the Niagara Falls Chapter of the DAR as the Chapter Registrar, the Western New York Genealogical Society (WNYGS) as a member of the Board of Directors, and the Virtual Genealogical Association (VGA) as the Corresponding Secretary. You can learn more about Jeanette on her website and her profile page for the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG).
