Whether you're creepin' it real or too much of a cutie to be spooky, it's time to eat, drink, and be scary. Hagley is going trick-or-treating this week with a young Thomas C. Marshall, Jr., seen here in a 1925 photograph.
This glass plate negative is from Hagley Library's Thomas C. Marshall photographs collection (Accession 1990.270). The Marshall family settled in the area now known as Yorklyn, Delaware in the mid-1700s. They became prominent members of the region after 1890, when Israel W. Marshall formed a partnership with his brother, T. Elwood Marshall, and Franklin Ewart to purchase the former Garrett paper mill in Yorklyn, renaming it the Marshall Brothers Paper Mill.
The endeavor was profitable, and it allowed Isreal to build his family a Victorian mansion in 1897, now known as Auburn Heights, on a hill overlooking the paper mill. This mansion has remained in the family, belonging first to Israel's son, T. (Thomas) Clarence Marshall, and later to his son, Thomas C. Marshall, Jr.
T. Clarence Marshall was a man of many hobbies. He was a steam automobile and railroad enthusiast, as well as an enthusiast of trapshooting. He purchased the first automobile in Yorklyn in 1904, and later became dealer in Stanley Steamer cars, selling them from 1910 to 1920. Marshall also acquired a large personal collection of Stanley Steamers, dating from 1902 to 1922. From the late 1940s onward, T. Clarence Marshall acquired and built small-scale locomotives and railroad tracks on his property, creating a miniature railroad, which he opened on occasion to the public along with an automobile museum.
He was also an avid photographer; the Hagley Library's collection of Thomas C. Marshall photographs (Accession 1990.270) contains hundreds of images featuring the Marshall family, their homes and places of work, their relatives and friends, automobiles, and views of notable landscapes and sites in the Chester County, Pennsylvania and Delaware area. To view a selection of material from this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.