Sidney Ketchum (1797-1862)

Sidney Ketchum, a land surveyor, was born in Clinton County, New York. Seeking a new home and hoping to found a town, Ketchum explored central lower Michigan in 1830. Later that year he obtained government grants for the land on which most of Marshall now stands. He named the town in honor of U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall. Ketchum founded the county’s first bank in 1836 and built the city’s first Methodist church in 1838.

[Back]: This handsome structure was built in 1838 by Sidney Ketchum, founder of Marshall. For many years it was one of the largest and most elaborate hotels outside of Detroit. The then three-story structure, known as the Marshall House, had forty bedrooms and a dining room with a seating capacity of 150. Suffering from competition with a newly erected local inn, the hotel closed in 1859. The building reopened in 1864 as the Perrin Collegiate Institute, a boarding and day school for girls. It now houses a mortuary.