Marshall Preston

Born	1792-06-05 Bedford, MA
Died	1874-11-02 Lexington, MA
Select Board
In Office	1821 - 1843 1845 - 1849
Town Clerk
In Office	1821 - 1849
Preceded by	Samuel Whiting II
Succeeded by	John Baldwin II
Central Postmaster
In Office	1826 - 1849
Preceded by	William Richardson
Succeeded by	John Baldwin II
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1829 - 1830
Succeeded by	Josiah Rogers II
Howe School Trustee
In Office	1852 - 1866

Marshall Preston (1792-1874) was a lawyer who served as Billerica's Town Clerk for twenty-eight years and as its postmaster for more than twenty. He was born in Bedford on June 5, 1792, a son of Dr. Amariah Preston and his wife Hannah. He read law with his uncle, Warren Preston, and was admitted to the bar at Augusta, Maine, but soon came to Billerica, where Hazen dates his practice from about 1820 to 1849.

On February 12, 1824 he married Maria Parker, a daughter of John Parker of Billerica, born October 10, 1797. Their son George Henry, born June 6, 1825, graduated from Harvard in 1846, married Catherine R. Faulkner, a daughter of James R. Faulkner, on January 1, 1850, and practised law in Boston until his death on May 29, 1868. Their daughter Susan Crosby, born September 21, 1831, died on November 25, 1851. The family lived in the house on the east side of the street one door north of Andover Street, later the home of W. H. Blanchard, which the First Parish bought in 1881 for its parsonage.

He was chosen town clerk in 1821 and kept the office every year through 1848. In the same years he sat on the Select Board from 1821 to 1840, in 1842 and from 1845 to 1848, twenty-five years in all, and he represented the town in the General Court in 1829 and 1830. He was appointed postmaster on January 11, 1826 and held the office until John Baldwin Jr. succeeded him on October 16, 1849. He was also a trustee of the Billerica Academy, and in 1852 he was named one of the first trustees of the Howe School under the will of Zadok Howe, serving until 1866.

In 1849 he moved to Lexington. He served as an assistant clerk of the courts of Middlesex County until 1863 and died in Lexington on November 2, 1874, aged 82. Hazen summed him up as "long town-clerk and post-master; an influential and useful citizen."

Marshall Preston

Marshall Preston

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