Albert Morley Marshall was born December 25, 1851. His father, Seth Marshall, was born near Hartford in Colebrook, Connecticut, but spent his active life at Painesville, Ohio, where he was a hardware merchant, president of the First National Bank and otherwise extensively interested in northern Ohio business. His fifth child was Albert M. Marshall, who grew up and was educated in the schools of Painesville. At the age of nineteen he went to Saginaw and entered the shipping room of Morley Brothers, hardware merchants. For twenty-two years he remained with that firm, and when he left was vice president and general manager and had demonstrated the faculty of gathering about him and infusing his personal influence through a splendid organization. He was also president of the U. S. Graphite Company and the Lufkin Rule Company, which he had started at Cleveland and later moved to Saginaw.
In the face of conditions that prevailed in 1893 it is possible to credit Mr. Marshall with nothing less than extraordinary vision and courage in surrendering his attractive and promising interests in Michigan and elsewhere and taking hold of a proposition at Duluth that promised a constant battle as a precedent for growth and success.
In the spring of 1893 he acquired the controlling interest in the Chapin-Wells Hardware Company, the name being changed to the Marshall-Wells Hardware Company. The chief owner of the Wells interests, C. W. Wells, was drowned the same fall while duck hunting, and his partner, F. C. Stone, died three months later. Their estates were represented in the Marshall-Wells directorate for some years. Mr. Marshall in the meantime was left to fight out the battle almost alone.
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