Marsh, Edith L.
Naturalist, Writer ~ 1870-1960
Edith Marsh was born at Peasemarsh Farm, Clarksburg, in 1870. Her father was the first Post Master of Clarksburg. Her sister, Ada, became an artist and her brother Fred, kept an apiary. Edith was interested in ornithology and became a pioneering conservationist. She turned Peasemarsh, the family homestead into a bird sanctuary. She invited school groups to the premises and gave talks on birds and nature. Edith was an accomplished author and wrote The Story of Canada for use as a textbook in Ontario schools. She wrote books about ornithology including The Birds of Peasemarsh, two volumes of With the Birds, and a weekly column in The Toronto Mail and Empire. She also wrote Where the Buffalo Roamed – the Story of Western Canada told for the Young, 1908. She was an active member of the Outdoor Writers of Canada. Perhaps she is most widely appreciated for writing A History of the County of Grey, an invaluable resource to researchers and historians of Grey County. In her later years, Marsh wrote children’s stories and published the Trillium Hill when she was 85. She died in 1960, ninety years old, at Peasemarsh where she lived her entire life. Her will directed that Peasemarsh be sold to the conservation authority, to be maintained as a sanctuary for the birds she loved.
Additional information: Sharon Cake Ed. Eminent Women of Grey County, Grey County Historical Society, Richardson, Bond, Wright Ltd., Owen Sound, 1977.
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