Page 29 - The CRAIG family

MARSHALL EDWARD CRAIG (my Grandfather)
As I started working on my grandparents, I had this perception of who they were. Daddy was so young when they died, and his memories are that of a child and that’s what I grew up hearing – his memories. I remember asking Daddy one time how come there was such an age difference from Aunt Eva to Aunt Charlotte and the rest of the kids and his response was that it was because they were poor, and they couldn’t afford to have more children.
As you read the history of Marshall and Jean and their years together you see a very different picture. I’m sure they must have loved each other very much or were just obsessed with each other. It also may just be a case where Marshall had a lot of growing up to do. We will never really know. I choose to think that after they married for the third and final time and had 5 more children, that they were happy and content with one another until the day they died.
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Marshall Edward Craig was born December 27, 1882, in Prather, Clark County, Indiana. His mother was Nancy Barnes. Nancy was widowed from George W. Reed who died June 1882, at the age of 32. She and George had 5 children at the time of his death, and she was 3 months pregnant with Marshall. Nancy married Colmore Allen Craig on August 11, 1882 and was 5 months pregnant with Marshall when they married. The question has always been was Nancy pregnant by her husband George or by Colmore, who was a bachelor, living next door to Nancy and George with the parents of George Reed.
As previously mentioned, that question was answered definitively in June 2019 when it was confirmed by my DNA that Marshall was in fact the biological son or Colmore Allen Craig and not Nancy’s then husband George Reed.
In the 1900 census, Marshall was 17 years old and living with his parents, Nancy and George’s daughter Matie and Colmore and Nancy’s children, Pearl and Alvah.
An article in the Jeffersonville Evening News dated September 5, 1902, outlines an incident that involved 19-year-old Marshall:
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