You’d think that nothing much of interest ever happens in the small mid-western town of Marshall, Michigan (population 6000.) However, reading its history, which dates back to its founding in 1830, the folks there have much to be proud of. The first railroad labor union in the U.S., The Brotherhood of the Footboard (later renamed the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen), was formed in Marshall in 1863. Marshall was one of the only stops between Chicago and Detroit and became known as the Chicken Pie city because the only thing one could get to eat in the time it took to cool and switch engines was a chicken pie. Another story of the good folk of Marshall occurred today, 1847, when slave catchers attempted to retrieve Adam and Sarah Crosswhite and their four children who escaped slavery from Kentucky in 1843 and settled in Marshall. The townspeople, led by militant abolitionist Charles T. Gorham, a citizen of Marshall and a prominent banker, detained the slave catchers while the Crosswhites fled to Detroit and then across the border to Canada. Said Gorham to the slavecatchers: “you can’t have the Crosswhite family, we can’t let you take them, we regard them as free citizens, and this is a free country, we don’t know slavery.” The Marshall cabin where the Crosswhites lived no longer stands, but a plaque commemorating the incident stands near the apparent site. The Crosswhites are buried in Marshall’s Oakridge Cemetery, not far from Charles Gorham. Below, picture of the plaque near the site of the Crosswhite’s Marshall home.