Who was the Marshall in Marshallstown, Marshall Street and Marshall Square? How did the suburb Melrose in northern Johannesburg get its name? Where did the name of the famous Glenhove Road which leads into Rosebank come from? If you are intrigued by any of these questions please read on. The article below gives an overview of the life of Henry Brown Marshall one of the pioneers of Johannesburg. It was written by Monica Marshall and appeared in the April 1966 edition of Bulletin (the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation, today the Heritage Association of South Africa).
Henry Brown Marshall was born at Glenhove, Lanarkshire, Scotland on 21st October, 1852, the second son of James Marshall and Margaret Brown, daughter of Henry Brown of Middlerig. Glenhove is a farm near Cumbernauld, part of lands which had been in the family since the late Seventeenth Century.
Henry Brown Marshall (1852-1948)
Marshall was educated at Dollar Academy and then in due course he became Manager of Nether Johnston Colliery, near Glasgow, experience which was to be useful later on. In 1878, after an illness, he was advised to live in a dry climate and, as one of his sisters had married in 1874 William McLaren, a leading citizen of Heidelberg, Transvaal, it was natural for him to join them. There were no railways in those...
