Marshall T. Reeves

Marshall T. Reeves

Marshall T. Reeves, son of William F., was born (1851) in Rush County where his parents had settled. Like most of the first generation Reeves, Marshall spent his boyhood on the farm where he became self-reliant and early on repaired and improved farm machinery. After completing the first eight grades of his education, he taught school in Rush County and later relocated in Knightstown, where with his father William and his uncle Alfred, he engaged in the manufacture and sales of an improved version of the Two-Horse Tongueless Corn Plow, his first invention.
In 1872 he married Louisa McBride of Rush County. Following improvements on the Tongueless Plow and after renaming it the Hoosier Boy Corn Plow, Marshall saw it widely adopted by many farmers in the corn-belt states. In 1881 the Reeves Straw Stacker made its debut on the implement market. Like others in the large family Marshall-wealthy, a philanthropist, and a self-made man-was a Democrat, a member of the Christian Church and of the Columbus City Council (to which he was twice elected), and president of Reeves Pulley in the mid-1880s. He died in 1925.