John Marshall was born Sept. 24, 1755, in Fauquier County, Virginia, at a small village then called Germantown, but now known as Midland, a station on the Southern Railway not far south of Manassas. His grandfather, John Marshall, the first of the family of whom there appears to be any record, was an emigrant from Wales. He left four sons, the eldest of whom was Thomas Marshall, the father of the Chief Justice. Thomas Marshall, though a man of meagre early education, possessed great natural gifts, and rendered honorable and useful public service both as a member of the Virginia Legislature, and as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, in which he rose to the rank of colonel. His son, John Marshall, was the eldest of fifteen children. Of his mother, whose maiden name was Keith, little is known, but it has been well observed by one of Marshall's biographers, that, as she reared her fifteen children--seven sons and eight daughters--all to mature years, she could have had little opportunity to make any other record for herself, and could hardly have made a better one. Subsequently to his birth, Marshall's parents removed to an estate called Oak Hill, in the western part of Fauquier County. It was here that in 1775, when nineteen years of age, he heard the call of his country and entered the patriot army as a lieutenant. We have of him at this time the first personal description, written by a kinsman who was an eye-witness of the scene, and preserved in the eulogy delivered by Mr. Binney before the Select and Common Councils of Philadelphia on Sept. 24, 1835. "His figure," says the writer, "I have now before me. He was about six feet high, straight and rather slender, of dark complexion, showing little if any rosy red, yet good health, the outline of the face nearly a circle, and within that, eyes dark to blackness, strong and penetrating, beaming with intelligence and good nature; an upright forehead, rather low, was terminated in a horizontal line by a mass of raven-black hair of unusual thickness and strength; the features of the face were in harmony with this outline, and the temples fully developed. The result of this combination was interesting and very agreeable. The body and limbs indicated agility rather than strength, in which, however, he was by no means deficient. He wore a purple or pale-blue hunting shirt, and trousers of the same material fringed with white. A round black hat, mounted with the buck's tail for a cockade, crowned the figure and the man. He went through the manual exercise by word and motion deliberately pronounced and performed, in the presence of the company, before he required the men to imitate him, and then proceeded to exercise them, with the most perfect temper.... After a few lessons the company were dismissed, and informed that if they wished to hear more about the war, and would form a circle around him, he would tell them what he understood about it.... He addressed the company for something like an hour....