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Name
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Ida S. Marshall
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Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books.
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Biographical Information
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Ida S. Marshall was a free-born African American woman, originally from Massachusetts. Marshall first contacted the Freedmen’s Bureau about a teaching position in March, 1867, writing directly to Commissioner Oliver O. Howard. Her husband, Thomas Marshall, had been General Howard’s personal servant during military operations in South Carolina in 1861. Now Thomas was in ill health, and the couple were living in Baltimore with few friends. General Howard passed her letter to the Bureau’s education superintendent, Rev. John W. Alvord. He responded to Marshall, explaining that the Bureau was not directly involved in the hiring of teachers. He advised her of several aid societies that she might contact for an appointment. She must have had success with the Baltimore Association, because it was that organization that would support the Churchville school from its establishment until April of 1870.
Marshall corresponded frequently with the Freedmen’s Bureau, and worked energetically with local white supporters of black education to host public meetings and examinations of her school. In June, 1869, she wrote to Superintendent John Kimball, asking him to support her (unsuccessful) bid to become the U.S. Postmaster at Churchville. By July, 1870, the months of overcrowded classrooms and exposure to inclement weather had taken their toll on Marshall, and she wrote to the superintendent requesting a posting in a state further south, “even Louisiana.” Apparently receiving no response, she traveled north during the summer break to Newport, Rhode Island, where on August 9, 1870, she penned a letter to Rev. John W. Alvord, Freedmen’s Bureau education superintendent and the man who had advised her back in 1867. In that letter, she cited declining salary, exposure, and “other difficulties,” as her reasons for wanting to wanting to teach somewhere other than Maryland, and repeated her desire to relocate to somewhere in the deeper South to continue her work. She was unsuccessful in her efforts, however, and was still teaching at Churchville in early 1871.
In April, 1870, support of the school at Churchville transferred from the Baltimore Association (which was ceasing its operations) to the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society. Ida S. Marshall left the school permanently soon after February, 1871. That month, her final monthly report stated that thenceforward the school would be “supported by the county, with a county teacher.” Marshall continued her teaching career elsewhere until at least the mid-1870s at schools in Maryland and South Carolina.
