William Marshell
- formal_name:
- first_date: 1804
- last_date: 1804
- function: Publisher
- locales: Richmond
- precis: Publisher of a religious tract in Richmond (1804) from the press of Thomas Nicolson (315).
- notes: Publisher
Richmond
Publisher of a religious tract in Richmond (1804) from the press of Thomas Nicolson (315).
Marshell was apparently a Mecklenburg County planter who published a single religious title in Richmond in 1804, employing the press of Thomas Nicolson. But no information on his life or pursuits has been found beyond the brief attribution on that work's title page.
That single imprint was a reprinting of a sermon collection by Joseph Lathrop (1731-1820), a Congregationalist minister from West Springfield, Massachusetts – Sermons on the Mode and Subjects of Christian Baptism – to which was appended a short History of the Origin of the Anabaptists written by Nathan Perkins (1748-1838), a colleague of Lathrop's from West Hartford, Connecticut. Designed as a counter-argument to adult baptism, the work issued initially from the Hartford press of Elisha Babcock in 1789; the Worcester, Massachusetts concern of Thomas & Andrews (Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer Turell Andrews) issued a new edition in 1793 which appears to have been the source for the 1804 Richmond edition. As Marshell did not publish any imprints thereafter, this solitary event evidently represents a personal reaction to the evangelical activities of Baptist ministers then a visible part of life on Virginia's Southside where he resided, and that he was the tract's principal distributor.
No Personal Data yet discovered.
Sources: Imprint (S/S 6627); publishing history established from the bibliographic record.
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