John Marsh
John Marsh was a prominent temperance reformer and minister born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in the late 18th century. He received his education at Yale and became a licensed preacher in 1809, eventually serving as the pastor of the Congregational church in Haddam, Connecticut, after his ordination in 1818. Marsh's commitment to temperance was influenced by his early experiences with the effects of alcohol on laborers during his childhood. Throughout his ministry, he advocated for total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, believing that collective action against intemperance was necessary to alleviate social drinking pressures.
Marsh gained recognition for his impactful sermons and involvement in the Connecticut Temperance Society, where he served as secretary and general agent. His influential speech in 1829 significantly contributed to the temperance movement, and he played a key role in the founding of the American Temperance Union in 1836. He also edited publications dedicated to temperance advocacy and represented the movement internationally, attending conventions such as the World's Temperance Convention in London in 1841. After a decline in health post-Civil War, Marsh retired from active roles in the movement. He passed away in 1868, leaving behind a legacy of dedication to temperance reform through his writings and organizational efforts.
Subject Terms
John Marsh
- John Marsh
- Born: April 2, 1788
- Died: August 4, 1868
Temperance reformer, was born in We-thersfield, Connecticut, the son of the Reverend John Marsh, for many years pastor of the Congregational Church in Wethersfield, and Ann (Grant) Marsh, of East Windsor, Connecticut.
John Marsh began his formal education at age ten, in the school of the Reverend Azel Backus in Bethlehem, Connecticut. After two years there he entered Yale. His chosen career was the ministry, which he studied both at Yale and, after graduating in 1804, with his father. In June 1809 he was licensed to preach by the Hartford South Association of Ministers, and in the next nine years he preached at various churches in Connecticut. In 1818, after ordination, he was installed as pastor of the Congregational church in Haddam, Connecticut. He married Frances Fowler Talmadge of Warren, Connecticut, on October 5, 1824.
Marsh came to the ministry at a time when the consumption of alcoholic beverages was becoming a significant social issue. Distilled spirits were consumed in large quantities, and the most common drink in the New England home was not water or milk but hard cider. In his autobiography, Temperance Recollections: Labors, Defeats, Triumphs. An Autobiography (1866), Marsh recalled that on the family farm one of his boyhood tasks was to supply the workers in the fields with rum, of which they “took copious draughts, showing how perfectly it unfitted them for continuance in labor.” These childhood encounters with the debilitating effects of hard liquor “never faded from memory,” and he resolved to become a teetotaler.
This resolve was difficult to fulfill, however, because ministers, being members of the local social elite, were constantly invited to gatherings at which drinking was virtually obligatory. At his Haddam church he refused offers to drink, “excepting where, in some humble family, it would have caused grief, as not sufficiently good in my estimation.” The best approach, Marsh decided, was to preach against alcoholic beverages in general, since only total abstinence by large numbers of people would lessen the social pressure to drink.
In a series of revivals at which he warned parishioners about the evils of intemperance, “its cost, and consequent waste to the people,” he converted a number of heavy drinkers to total abstinence. The revivals made him well known to temperance reformers in the state. In 1829, when the Connecticut Temperance Society was formed, he was elected secretary and general agent, in which capacities he spoke at meetings throughout the state. One of his speeches, “Putnam and the Wolf, or the Monster Destroyed,” given at the Windham County Temperance Society in 1829, sold 150,000 printed copies and later became one of the pamphlets of the American Tract Society.
As his reputation spread, Marsh was called increasingly far afield to speak and organize temperance societies. In 1831 he helped promote temperance work in Baltimore and Washington, including a national meeting held in the chamber of the House of Representatives. By 1833 he was so busy with temperance work that he resigned his ministry in Haddam. In the same year, as a Connecticut delegate to the first National Temperance Convention, held in Philadelphia, he sat on the committee whose work led to the founding of the American Temperance Union (1836).
From 1833 to 1836 Marsh was employed as an agent of the Pennsylvania State Temperance Society, organizing and speaking throughout the state. In 1836 he was first secretary of the Saratoga Springs (New York) Convention, during which members of the American Temperance Union passed a resolution calling for abstinence not only from distilled liquor but from wine and beer. The union also established a publishing arm, situated in Philadelphia and later in New York, and asked Marsh to be its head.
As editor, Marsh supervised two monthlies, the Journal of the American Temperance Union and, from 1839, the Youth’s Temperance Advocate. He was also the union’s corresponding secretary, a post that kept him in the center of temperance work around the world and caused him to travel frequently to important meetings. In 1841 he was one of thirty-one American delegates to the World’s Temperance Convention in London, and in 1857 he presided over the North American Temperance Convention in Chicago.
After the Civil War, the pace of Marsh’s life greatly slowed, owing mainly to two attacks of partial paralysis. In 1865 the American Temperance Union was superseded by a new organization, the National Temperance Society, and Marsh retired from his editorial and secretarial duties. He died at eighty at his home in Brooklyn, New York, and was buried in Wethersfield, Connecticut.
In addition to his autobiography and temperance pamphlets, Marsh wrote An Epitome of General Ecclesiastical History from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (1827). A full list of his publications is given in F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Yale College, vol. 5 (1911). In the absence of a full-length biography, the most complete account is that in The Dictionary of American Biography (1933). Obituaries appeared in The New York Times, August 5, 1868, and the Congregational Quarterly, January 1869.