"I looked back and saw my father and his father and all our fathers, and in front to see my son and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond....

As I felt so they had felt and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning and no end."

In 1999 I spent a happy few days in the Gloucestershire villages where my MARSHALL family lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since then, I all but gave up hope of finding any living MARSHALL relatives.

However, this page has served me well, for I have now heard from the descendants of my grandfather's brother Arthur. I am quite overcome and greatly look forward to comparing our research and family stories.

My g.g.g.g. grandfather, Samuel MARSHALL, married Sarah JUICE in Longborough in 1771. The JUICE/DUCE family goes back to the 17th century in Longborough, but I have still not been successful in finding Samuel MARSHALL's baptism - or even his burial.

There were MARSHALLs from 1612 in villages within a mile or two of Longborough, such as Upper Swell. Condicote and Donnington are also possibilities, but the Condicote records are badly damaged at that period.

My g.g.g. grandfather John was the fourth of Samuel and Sarah's five children and lived to 77, but at least two of his siblings died before adulthood.

In 1811 J. MARSHALL, likely my g.g.g.grandfather John, lived in the cottage which still adjoins the churchyard.

John's son Samuel moved to the Sezincote Estate, where, as a gardener, he was living in Diamond Lodge when his daughter Sarah died at 14, though Samuel and his wife are themselves buried in Longborough Churchyard.

Their son William (my great-grandfather) married and brought up his family in Bourton on the Hill until 1880 when he left the family and, apparently, the area. Only my grandfather Percy and his mother Hannah were still in Bourton on the Hill by the 1891 census. Hannah and William's children all survived childhood, although Henry, their fourth son, died at the age of 20.

My brother and I think that Percy is the lad second from the right in front of the schoolmaster. Bourton School still exists as a community centre for the village.

It is likely that one or more of my grandfather's brothers and sisters emigrated to Canada - I was interested to see an advertisement in the Evesham Journal in 1890 offering grants of land in Canada to those willing to emigrate there.

According to a family story, one of the brothers went to Windsor, Ontario, Canada, where he was in 'the transport business'. I now think, from an obscure reference in my father's diary, that he may still have been there in 1924.

It now appears that it may in fact have been one of my father's cousins who emigrated to Canada.

These are my MARSHALLs so far, (confirmed direct line in red).