Page 31 - The Hunt - Spring 2022

by a reclusive couple who didn’t respond to requests for an interview. “I bought my house because it overlooks the Marshall house and maybe the world’s largest collection of winter aconites,” Kaat says.
If there’s a controversial piece to Marshall’s story, it involves the ancestral home and its contents. In 1982, they were willed by the estate of Campbell Weir to the Chester County Historical Society. By the early 1990s, the organization had broken the will, auctioned
off his belongings and sold the real estate into private hands. Catheryn Campbell Weir, a niece, still heads the Humphry Marshall Fund.
Access to the house is crucial for the documentary, says Slouf, who toured the
“Everything Humphry did is so timely again.”
—Artist Adrian Martinez
home a few times before it was purchased. Slouf was amazed by its drying room, essentially a hothouse for plants that was created by two interconnected fireplace flues piping heat through walls on the second floor, which once included a small observatory for astronomical studies. “The place was supposed
to be a museum,” says Franklin Marshall, a local 88-year-old family descendant. “No one knows where all the furniture went [after auction]. Some of it was Humphry’s. We’ve asked the historical society, which said it’s
in storage in York. It’s a shame the place isn’t being used the way it was supposed to be.”
The retired sawmill operator has inherited Humphry’s 1786 election certificate as a corresponding member of the American Society, one of the organizations that merged to form the American Philosophical Society. It’s signed by Ben Franklin. He also has his ancestor’s reading glasses and other relics. “I’m certainly proud,” he says. “It’s a pretty good ancestry, I think.” TH
Artist and Marshallton champion Adrian Martinez. (Opposite page) The original Humphry Marshall homestead.
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