Mary Magdalene Marshall

Mary Magdalene Marshall (September 7, 1783 – January 26, 1877) was an American real-estate investor and philanthropist. She established The Marshall House hotel in Savannah, Georgia, and had erected in the city several notable buildings that are still standing today.

Life and career Mary Magdalene Leaver was born in 1783 to Gabriel Leaver, a cabinet-maker from London, and Mary Shick. She is believed to have been their only child, and inherited a "sizeable estate" upon their deaths.

Her father owned a large plantation three miles to the west of Savannah, and lived next door to Mordecai Sheftall on Broughton Street. He rented properties in Ewenburg. it was described as a four-storey mansion by Joseph Frederick Waring in his book Cerveau's Savannah. He is interred in Manhattan.

In her later years, Mary Magdalene Marshall appointed Dr. James Johnston Waring, a family friend and grandfather of the aforementioned Joseph Frederick Waring, as codicil to her will, making him a trustee of her estate and guardian of her granddaughter.

Selected Marshall properties The Marshall House, on today's East Broughton Street, was completed in 1852.

The Mary Marshall Row on East Oglethorpe Avenue was completed in 1856. It stands opposite Colonial Park Cemetery.

These were followed by the Mary Marshall Houses, in the southwestern civic block of Oglethorpe Square, in 1859. She used them as rental properties.

Mary Marshall and her estate leased and collected rents from The Marshall House until 1914.

Death and legacy Marshall died in 1877 in Savannah. She was 93. According to the Savannah Morning News, she had no sickness or disease, but "passed away gradually and imperceptibly, growing weaker and weaker from day to day during the past week until she sank to sleep."

She is buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery, alongside her husband and daughter. Her parents are also interred there.