Marshall Spring Bidwell married Clara Wilcox, and their son, Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr., can be found at FindaGrave Memorial number 99723579.
THE STORY OF MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL
By Rick Wilcox
Marshall Spring Bidwell, lawyer and politician, was born 16 February 1799 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Barnabas and Mary Gray Bidwell. On September 1st 1818 he married Clara Wilcox of Bath, near Kingston, Upper Canada. Of their six children only three survived to adulthood, Mary Sabra and Clara Emily, both of whom remained unmarried, and their brother Marshall Spring Bidwell, a druggist, who married a cousin, Alice Cecelia Bidwell, daughter of John Devotion Bidwell of Monterey.
Marshall Spring’s father, Barnabas Bidwell, who had been a state senator, attorney general of Massachusetts, a member of Congress, and an ardent Jeffersonian, living in Federalist New England, was forced to leave his home state in 1810 after he had been accused by his political enemies of malversation of funds as Treasurer of Berkshire County. The family settled in Upper Canada at Bath just before the War of 1812. Marshall was educated in the local schools and at home by his father who provided the foundation for his career in law. Marshall Spring, at 17, studied law with Daniel Washburn and Daniel Hagerman, barristers and attorneys-at-law in Kingston and in 1821 he was called to the bar.
Marshall Spring Bidwell and his father became the center of the ongoing struggle in Upper Canada in the early 1820’s in connection with the “alien question” as to whether Americans who had come into the colony in the previous quarter century must undergo a complicated naturalization procedure before they could enjoy political and civil rights as British subjects.
In 1821 the House of Assembly voted to expel Barnabas from the seat he had won a few weeks earlier, on the grounds that the charges earlier made against him in Massachusetts rendered him unfit to hold his seat. In the general elections of 1824 Marshall was elected and took his seat, despite a ruling by the British law officers that he as well as his father was not qualified for membership. Bidwell, still in his mid-twenties, not long after his election to office, took a leadership role in the assembly.
In the elections of 1828 the Upper Canadian Reformers strengthened their majority in the assembly and proceeded to elect Bidwell speaker. The Reformers were routed in the 1836 elections, and among those not returned was Bidwell. Bidwell wrote, “twelve years hard labor have exhausted my hopes, my strength . . . and I was unwilling to incur expense or trouble.”
When Bidwell left Upper Canada in 1837 he was admitted to practice by both the state Supreme Court and the Court of Chancery of New York, and after moving to New York City he was taken into partnership in George W. Strong’s law firm. After Strong’s death Bidwell worked in partnership with Strong’s son, George Templeton Strong, later joined by the latter’s cousin, Charles Edward. The firm of Strong, Bidwell and Strong became one of the most prominent in NYC, and Bidwell was recognized for his expertise of the law of real estate. George Templeton Strong was quoted, “We all leaned on him, too much for our own good. Instead of studying up on a question, I usually went to Bidwell and received from him an off-hand abstract of all the cases bearing on it and of all the considerations on either side. He loved law as a pure science.” G. T. Strong also noted at Bidwell’s death that it was “strange that this family, after so many years in New York, should have formed no positive friendships or alliances, especially considering poor, dear old Bidwell’s warm-heartedness, geniality and strong social instincts . . . I suppose poor Bidwell’s Puritanical convictions led him to look on ‘calls’, tea parties, and all the little two-penny machinery of ‘social’ life as of the nature of evil, in spite of his own natural impulses.”
Bidwell lectured at the Columbia Law School, and in 1858 Yale University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Bidwell was a Presbyterian and a temperance advocate, and in his New York years a supporter of the American Bible Society. Marshall Spring Bidwell died 24 Oct. 1872 in New York City, N.Y. and was buried with his wife in the Bidwell family plot in the Stockbridge Town Cemetery.
The above article – and the accompanying photograph – originally were published in the Newsletter of The Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, Massachusetts (Fall/Winter 2017-18, p. 3). They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Rick Bidwell, the author, and the Bidwell House Museum.
THE STORY OF MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL
By Rick Wilcox
Marshall Spring Bidwell, lawyer and politician, was born 16 February 1799 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Barnabas and Mary Gray Bidwell. On September 1st 1818 he married Clara Wilcox of Bath, near Kingston, Upper Canada. Of their six children only three survived to adulthood, Mary Sabra and Clara Emily, both of whom remained unmarried, and their brother Marshall Spring Bidwell, a druggist, who married a cousin, Alice Cecelia Bidwell, daughter of John Devotion Bidwell of Monterey.
Marshall Spring’s father, Barnabas Bidwell, who had been a state senator, attorney general of Massachusetts, a member of Congress, and an ardent Jeffersonian, living in Federalist New England, was forced to leave his home state in 1810 after he had been accused by his political enemies of malversation of funds as Treasurer of Berkshire County. The family settled in Upper Canada at Bath just before the War of 1812. Marshall was educated in the local schools and at home by his father who provided the foundation for his career in law. Marshall Spring, at 17, studied law with Daniel Washburn and Daniel Hagerman, barristers and attorneys-at-law in Kingston and in 1821 he was called to the bar.
Marshall Spring Bidwell and his father became the center of the ongoing struggle in Upper Canada in the early 1820’s in connection with the “alien question” as to whether Americans who had come into the colony in the previous quarter century must undergo a complicated naturalization procedure before they could enjoy political and civil rights as British subjects.
In 1821 the House of Assembly voted to expel Barnabas from the seat he had won a few weeks earlier, on the grounds that the charges earlier made against him in Massachusetts rendered him unfit to hold his seat. In the general elections of 1824 Marshall was elected and took his seat, despite a ruling by the British law officers that he as well as his father was not qualified for membership. Bidwell, still in his mid-twenties, not long after his election to office, took a leadership role in the assembly.
In the elections of 1828 the Upper Canadian Reformers strengthened their majority in the assembly and proceeded to elect Bidwell speaker. The Reformers were routed in the 1836 elections, and among those not returned was Bidwell. Bidwell wrote, “twelve years hard labor have exhausted my hopes, my strength . . . and I was unwilling to incur expense or trouble.”
When Bidwell left Upper Canada in 1837 he was admitted to practice by both the state Supreme Court and the Court of Chancery of New York, and after moving to New York City he was taken into partnership in George W. Strong’s law firm. After Strong’s death Bidwell worked in partnership with Strong’s son, George Templeton Strong, later joined by the latter’s cousin, Charles Edward. The firm of Strong, Bidwell and Strong became one of the most prominent in NYC, and Bidwell was recognized for his expertise of the law of real estate. George Templeton Strong was quoted, “We all leaned on him, too much for our own good. Instead of studying up on a question, I usually went to Bidwell and received from him an off-hand abstract of all the cases bearing on it and of all the considerations on either side. He loved law as a pure science.” G. T. Strong also noted at Bidwell’s death that it was “strange that this family, after so many years in New York, should have formed no positive friendships or alliances, especially considering poor, dear old Bidwell’s warm-heartedness, geniality and strong social instincts . . . I suppose poor Bidwell’s Puritanical convictions led him to look on ‘calls’, tea parties, and all the little two-penny machinery of ‘social’ life as of the nature of evil, in spite of his own natural impulses.”
Bidwell lectured at the Columbia Law School, and in 1858 Yale University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Bidwell was a Presbyterian and a temperance advocate, and in his New York years a supporter of the American Bible Society. Marshall Spring Bidwell died 24 Oct. 1872 in New York City, N.Y. and was buried with his wife in the Bidwell family plot in the Stockbridge Town Cemetery.
The above article – and the accompanying photograph – originally were published in the Newsletter of The Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, Massachusetts (Fall/Winter 2017-18, p. 3). They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Rick Bidwell, the author, and the Bidwell House Museum.
Marshall Spring Bidwell married Clara Wilcox, and their son, Marshall Spring Bidwell, Jr., can be found at FindaGrave Memorial number 99723579.
THE STORY OF MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL
By Rick Wilcox
Marshall Spring Bidwell, lawyer and politician, was born 16 February 1799 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Barnabas and Mary Gray Bidwell. On September 1st 1818 he married Clara Wilcox of Bath, near Kingston, Upper Canada. Of their six children only three survived to adulthood, Mary Sabra and Clara Emily, both of whom remained unmarried, and their brother Marshall Spring Bidwell, a druggist, who married a cousin, Alice Cecelia Bidwell, daughter of John Devotion Bidwell of Monterey.
Marshall Spring’s father, Barnabas Bidwell, who had been a state senator, attorney general of Massachusetts, a member of Congress, and an ardent Jeffersonian, living in Federalist New England, was forced to leave his home state in 1810 after he had been accused by his political enemies of malversation of funds as Treasurer of Berkshire County. The family settled in Upper Canada at Bath just before the War of 1812. Marshall was educated in the local schools and at home by his father who provided the foundation for his career in law. Marshall Spring, at 17, studied law with Daniel Washburn and Daniel Hagerman, barristers and attorneys-at-law in Kingston and in 1821 he was called to the bar.
Marshall Spring Bidwell and his father became the center of the ongoing struggle in Upper Canada in the early 1820’s in connection with the “alien question” as to whether Americans who had come into the colony in the previous quarter century must undergo a complicated naturalization procedure before they could enjoy political and civil rights as British subjects.
In 1821 the House of Assembly voted to expel Barnabas from the seat he had won a few weeks earlier, on the grounds that the charges earlier made against him in Massachusetts rendered him unfit to hold his seat. In the general elections of 1824 Marshall was elected and took his seat, despite a ruling by the British law officers that he as well as his father was not qualified for membership. Bidwell, still in his mid-twenties, not long after his election to office, took a leadership role in the assembly.
In the elections of 1828 the Upper Canadian Reformers strengthened their majority in the assembly and proceeded to elect Bidwell speaker. The Reformers were routed in the 1836 elections, and among those not returned was Bidwell. Bidwell wrote, “twelve years hard labor have exhausted my hopes, my strength . . . and I was unwilling to incur expense or trouble.”
When Bidwell left Upper Canada in 1837 he was admitted to practice by both the state Supreme Court and the Court of Chancery of New York, and after moving to New York City he was taken into partnership in George W. Strong’s law firm. After Strong’s death Bidwell worked in partnership with Strong’s son, George Templeton Strong, later joined by the latter’s cousin, Charles Edward. The firm of Strong, Bidwell and Strong became one of the most prominent in NYC, and Bidwell was recognized for his expertise of the law of real estate. George Templeton Strong was quoted, “We all leaned on him, too much for our own good. Instead of studying up on a question, I usually went to Bidwell and received from him an off-hand abstract of all the cases bearing on it and of all the considerations on either side. He loved law as a pure science.” G. T. Strong also noted at Bidwell’s death that it was “strange that this family, after so many years in New York, should have formed no positive friendships or alliances, especially considering poor, dear old Bidwell’s warm-heartedness, geniality and strong social instincts . . . I suppose poor Bidwell’s Puritanical convictions led him to look on ‘calls’, tea parties, and all the little two-penny machinery of ‘social’ life as of the nature of evil, in spite of his own natural impulses.”
Bidwell lectured at the Columbia Law School, and in 1858 Yale University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Bidwell was a Presbyterian and a temperance advocate, and in his New York years a supporter of the American Bible Society. Marshall Spring Bidwell died 24 Oct. 1872 in New York City, N.Y. and was buried with his wife in the Bidwell family plot in the Stockbridge Town Cemetery.
The above article – and the accompanying photograph – originally were published in the Newsletter of The Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, Massachusetts (Fall/Winter 2017-18, p. 3). They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Rick Bidwell, the author, and the Bidwell House Museum.
THE STORY OF MARSHALL SPRING BIDWELL
By Rick Wilcox
Marshall Spring Bidwell, lawyer and politician, was born 16 February 1799 at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Barnabas and Mary Gray Bidwell. On September 1st 1818 he married Clara Wilcox of Bath, near Kingston, Upper Canada. Of their six children only three survived to adulthood, Mary Sabra and Clara Emily, both of whom remained unmarried, and their brother Marshall Spring Bidwell, a druggist, who married a cousin, Alice Cecelia Bidwell, daughter of John Devotion Bidwell of Monterey.
Marshall Spring’s father, Barnabas Bidwell, who had been a state senator, attorney general of Massachusetts, a member of Congress, and an ardent Jeffersonian, living in Federalist New England, was forced to leave his home state in 1810 after he had been accused by his political enemies of malversation of funds as Treasurer of Berkshire County. The family settled in Upper Canada at Bath just before the War of 1812. Marshall was educated in the local schools and at home by his father who provided the foundation for his career in law. Marshall Spring, at 17, studied law with Daniel Washburn and Daniel Hagerman, barristers and attorneys-at-law in Kingston and in 1821 he was called to the bar.
Marshall Spring Bidwell and his father became the center of the ongoing struggle in Upper Canada in the early 1820’s in connection with the “alien question” as to whether Americans who had come into the colony in the previous quarter century must undergo a complicated naturalization procedure before they could enjoy political and civil rights as British subjects.
In 1821 the House of Assembly voted to expel Barnabas from the seat he had won a few weeks earlier, on the grounds that the charges earlier made against him in Massachusetts rendered him unfit to hold his seat. In the general elections of 1824 Marshall was elected and took his seat, despite a ruling by the British law officers that he as well as his father was not qualified for membership. Bidwell, still in his mid-twenties, not long after his election to office, took a leadership role in the assembly.
In the elections of 1828 the Upper Canadian Reformers strengthened their majority in the assembly and proceeded to elect Bidwell speaker. The Reformers were routed in the 1836 elections, and among those not returned was Bidwell. Bidwell wrote, “twelve years hard labor have exhausted my hopes, my strength . . . and I was unwilling to incur expense or trouble.”
When Bidwell left Upper Canada in 1837 he was admitted to practice by both the state Supreme Court and the Court of Chancery of New York, and after moving to New York City he was taken into partnership in George W. Strong’s law firm. After Strong’s death Bidwell worked in partnership with Strong’s son, George Templeton Strong, later joined by the latter’s cousin, Charles Edward. The firm of Strong, Bidwell and Strong became one of the most prominent in NYC, and Bidwell was recognized for his expertise of the law of real estate. George Templeton Strong was quoted, “We all leaned on him, too much for our own good. Instead of studying up on a question, I usually went to Bidwell and received from him an off-hand abstract of all the cases bearing on it and of all the considerations on either side. He loved law as a pure science.” G. T. Strong also noted at Bidwell’s death that it was “strange that this family, after so many years in New York, should have formed no positive friendships or alliances, especially considering poor, dear old Bidwell’s warm-heartedness, geniality and strong social instincts . . . I suppose poor Bidwell’s Puritanical convictions led him to look on ‘calls’, tea parties, and all the little two-penny machinery of ‘social’ life as of the nature of evil, in spite of his own natural impulses.”
Bidwell lectured at the Columbia Law School, and in 1858 Yale University conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws. Bidwell was a Presbyterian and a temperance advocate, and in his New York years a supporter of the American Bible Society. Marshall Spring Bidwell died 24 Oct. 1872 in New York City, N.Y. and was buried with his wife in the Bidwell family plot in the Stockbridge Town Cemetery.
The above article – and the accompanying photograph – originally were published in the Newsletter of The Bidwell House Museum, Monterey, Massachusetts (Fall/Winter 2017-18, p. 3). They are reproduced here with the kind permission of Rick Bidwell, the author, and the Bidwell House Museum.
Inscription
Marshall Spring
Bidwell
Born February 16, 1799
Died October 24, 1872
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Clara Wilcox
Wife of
Marshall S. Bidwell
Born September ... 1786 ?
Died April 23, 1862 ?
Family Members
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