Flashback
125 years ago
Death of a chancellor
Lawyer, historian, bibliophile, civic leader and one of the founders of UB, Orsamus H. Marshall, the university’s the second chancellor, died 125 years ago. After the death of his friend—UB’s first chancellor Millard Fillmore—in 1874, Marshall led UB as chair of the University Council; he officially was named chancellor in 1882.
The son of a prominent Buffalo physician, Marshall was born in 1813 and graduated from Union College before studying law at Yale. The present-day Buffalo law firm of Phillips Lytle LLP was founded by Marshall in 1834.
A distinguished historian and author of numerous works about the French in early Western New York and Southern Ontario, Marshall was well acquainted with noted Harvard historian Francis Parkman. The two conducted an active correspondence for several decades, and in the introduction to his monumental work “France and England in North America,” Parkman acknowledged Marshall as being “unrivalled in his knowledge of the history and traditions of the Niagara Frontier.”
The Buffalo Historical Society (now the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society) was founded in Marshall’s office in 1862. He also was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Grosvenor Library, and was instrumental in establishing Forest Lawn Cemetery. Marshall and his son, Charles D. Marshall, accumulated an impressive collection of books, manuscripts and maps related to the early history of the Niagara Frontier. In 1914, the collection was sold at auction in New York. Today, most of the collection is held by the New York Historical Society and other repositories in the city.
Marshall died in 1884 and was eulogized in the language of the time as “the typical American gentleman—dignified, without haughtiness; courteous, but not subservient; with winning graciousness of manner.” A collected edition of Marshall’s writings was published in 1887.
—John Edens, University Archives
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