Dr. R.H. Marsh died Monday afternoon at 5:30 o’clock at Brantwood Hospital after a decline of several years, aged 86 years. He was one of the most prominent Baptist ministers in the South and was greatly beloved.
Dr. Marsh had been in the ministry for 63 years and was president of the State Baptist Convention for a number of years. He was a graduate of the University of North Carolina and served for years as one of its trustees, also a trustee of Wake Forest College and Thomasville Orphanage. He was a chaplain in the Confederate army, enlisting form Chatham, his native county.
Funeral Tomorrow Morning
He is survived by one child, Mrs. C.D. Ray, with whom he made his home in Oxford. The funeral will be conducted from the Oxford Baptist church Wednesday morning at 11 o’clock with the interment in Elmwood Cemetery.
Brief Sketch
“No minister in the Baptist denomination in North Carolina is held in greater esteem than Dr. Robert Henry Marsh, president of the Baptist State Convention,” Capt. S.A. Ashe in a sketch in the Biographical History of North Carolina wrote some years ago. “Possessing strong intellectual powers, and being an excellent preacher and pastor, he could easily and creditably have filled any pulpit in the State, but early in his career, feeling that the churches away from the cities were in need of more intelligent men with religious zeal and determination, he chose to devote his life work to a country pastorate.”
Dr. Marsh graduated from the University in 1858. In January of the next year he accepted a position as tutor in Wake Forest College. In 1860 he resigned his tutorship at Wake Forest and entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, then located at Greenville, S.C. In 1861 he gave up his theological studies to accept the chaplaincy of the 26th Regiment of North Carolina troops.
On retirement from army duty, he accepted a professorship in Oxford Female College. In connection with his school duties, he was also actively engaged in ministerial duties. He preached four years at Oxford, then accepted a call from the First Baptist church at Henderson. Later he returned to Granville county taking up the pastorate of country churches most of which he served the remainder of his life.
Capt. Ashe is authority for the statement that no one ever served so long as president of the Baptist State Convention as Dr. Marsh except Dr. James McDaniel.
From 1897 to 1902 Dr. Marsh served as one of the vice presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention.
From the front page of The Oxford Public Ledger, Tuesday, October 7, 1924 newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073078/1924-10-07/ed-1/seq-1/#words=October+7%2C+1924
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