CELEBRATE ABNER MARION AND HIS LEGACY

Ancient landmarks distinguish New England, and provide our communities with tangible connections to the past. They also preserve community and family history.

While the origins of Burlington’s Marion Tavern at Grandview Farm is steeped in some mystery, we know it was assembled with the contributions of several individuals over the years, including Solomon Trull, Abner Marion, and Charles McIntire. Yet surprisingly, little has been written about these individuals and their families, and how they arrived in Burlington and developed property to fulfill generations of family desires for a better life.

Here, let us touch briefly on what is currently known about the Marions who developed Marion Tavern. As we approach the bicentennial of Abner Marion’s birth in 1809, it is appropriate to reflect on the history of the Marions.

The American Marion family story began just over 300 years ago, about the year 1704. A young French citizen named Benjamin Marion, born about 1674, and his wife, Judith, decided to leave the coastal province of Poitou, France, where their families had lived for generations. They chose to brave the dangers of a trans-Atlantic voyage, and many perils, to start completely over in America. Between 1702 and 1713, a disastrous series of French religious wars, following plagues and famines, swept Poitou, likely making it easier to leave.

Benjamin and Judith settled in Goose Creek, west of Charleston, South Carolina. They raised at least 11 children, including Gabriel, born in 1693. Gabriel grew up in South Carolina, and in 1714, married Esther Cordes of St. James Santee in Berkeley County, South Carolina. They possibly practiced agriculture and maritime commerce to survive. They raised seven children, all born in South Carolina, except the fifth, a son, Isaac. He was born in Boston in 1730, a New England oddity in a family that hailed from France and the colonial South.

Branded by his Boston birth, Isaac Marion maintained a fondness for Massachusetts, and in 1743, took as a second wife, Judith Snow, born in Woburn in 1716. Between 1745 and 1754, they raised five children in colonial Woburn; Isaac Jr., Judith, Sybil, Sally and Ebenezer. As Issac Jr. grew up, he lived through the Revolutionary War and his father’s death in South Carolina in 1781. That year, he also married Mary Cutler; her mother was Mary Wyman Cutler, a great granddaughter of Woburn and Burlington’s famed Francis Wyman, the tanner and farmer for whom a street and a school are named.

In 1784, Isaac Jr. and Mary Cutler Marion had a son, John Cutler Marion, who took Martha Carter for his wife in 1806. John and Martha’s oldest known child was Abner Marion, born in Burlington on Dec. 13, 1809. The years after 1807 were difficult in Massachusetts, largely because President Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo of 1807 crippled American maritime commerce, and pushed many families into poverty. Yet growing up inland in Burlington, and able to farm, the Marions likely achived an enviable degree of independence and security. Abner gained a younger sister, Martha, in 1820, the year Maine declared independence from Massachusetts.

On March 13, 1834, 24-year-old Abner Marion married Sarah Prescott of Concord, born on Feb. 25, 1810. She was a great niece of the Dr. Samuel Prescott who rode the famed Midnight Ride with Paul Revere on April 19, 1775. Enrerprising and energetic, Abner and Sarah established a strong presence on Center Street in downtown Burlington, and opened the Marion Tavern as a stage coach stop and ‘halfway house’ for the Boston and Lowell stage coach line.

To enlarge their Greek Revival style Burlington home in a cost effective and historically appropriate manner, the Marions acquired an old saltbox house that had earlier belonged to Solomon Trull (also a descendant of Francis Wyman and thus, a cousin of Abner’s), and annexed it to the west side of their house. In the process, they preserved the legacy and monuments of earlier generations, while they changed the property to support a new use.

Marion Tavern thus evolved as a symbol of family unity: of the Marions with the Prescotts and the Trulls. That bond became even stronger when young Martha Marion, Abner’s sister, married carpenter Humphrey Prescott, Sarah Marion’s brother.

As Marion Tavern at Grandview now stands on the even of Abner’s bicentennial, it represents an irreplaceable architectural landmark for Burlington. Marion Tavern must be preserved in historic Burlington, not simply to support the character of the town, but also to maintain the Marion family history. America was the legendary land of opportunity for the Marions and thousands of other struggling immigrants. Marion Tavern proves in its timbers that great American achievements were accomplished as the Marions moved from France to South Carolina, to Boston, Woburn, and finally to Burlington.

Submitted by Historic Preservationist John Goff, for the Burlington Historical Commission, November/December, 2007

From the Gazebo Archives

September 2007

October 2007