John Atherton Martin, after the death of his father in the early 1850s, made his home with his aunt Rebecca Atherton Burrill and her husband William M. Burrill in Belfast, Maine. William Burrill was a lawyer. They did not have children of their own, so they treated him as a son. He was educated in the Belfast schools. As a young man he decided to follow in his father's footsteps. He became a mariner and sailed the seven seas for many years. When he retired from the sea, he moved to Kentucky where he engaged in the lumber business. He married his wife there. They purchased a tobacco farm near Penrod, Kentucky (Muhlenberg county). Their eight children were born there. About 1900 they and their children moved to Carlisle, Arkansas, where they purchased a cotton farm. They lived there the rest of their lives.
