Person:John Newton (77)

According to E. Leonard, in The Newton Genealogy (de Pere, Wisc., 1915)

JOHN MARSHALL NEWTON* (Ephraim H.', Marshall", Jr., Marshall, Obediah^, Thomas', John-, Richard'), son of Rev. Ephraim Holland and Huldah (Chipman) Newton of Newfane, Marlborough, Vt., and Cambridge, Washington County, N. Y., was born at Marlborough, Vt.. July 16, 1827, and died at Cincinnati, Ohio, December 9, 1897, in his 71st year. He married at Cincinnati, Ohio, June 1, 1861, Lavinia Murdock Graham, daughter of George and Ellen Findlay (Murdock) Graham* of Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was born July 6, 1837. Mr. Newton was a man of literary tastes. He had been for nineteen years librarian of the "Young Men's Mercantile Library Association of Cincinnatti," to which he gave much of his time. He was a member of the patriotic societies ; registrar of the Ohio Society of Sons of the Revolution ; a member of the Mayflower Society, through descent from John Howland and Stephen Hopkins.

He died of heart disease, suddenly, while sitting at his desk. Funeral from Grace Episcopal church, College Hill, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 11, 1897. His widow and his daughter live at the home in College Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati (1912). In reply to my desire for further information regarding the life and work of her father, his daughter writes : "My father did not graduate from Williams College, but came West to Section Ten, as Northwestern Ohio was then called, to his brother Silas Chipman Newton.

"In 1850 ho walked across the plains to the gold-fields of California; was in the mines making a living as he could for two years. Then, as he was ill, he went on a 'tramp schooner' that plied up and down the Pacific Coast—became so fond of the sea that he took longer voyages, to Lima, and Valparaiso—living on shore a few weeks until his money was used up, then on ship again to earn more. He served as cook or scullion or able seaman, or anything. He sailed around the Horn, and was in Rio Janeiro some months. Then, suddenly, he decided to go home; shipped on the old man-of-war 'Massachusetts.' He was at home a few months, then went to Troy, N. Y, ; studied law and was admitted to the Bar; then went out West to Omaha, 'which he helped to lay out—for he was in the Land Office. He drifted back to Cincinnati, where his brother Chipman had now settled, and went into a bank; was in a County Clerk's office for a while; but found his natural vocation finally in the Library, which he loved as a child. And among those books he died. I don't think I have given you all his occupations. He used to say he had 30 different ones during his career."