09/14/13

CHAMBERS, Marcus (b. 1833)

Marcus L. CHAMBERS, farmer and merchant of Chambersville, Fayette County, was born in Robertson County, Tenn., February 28, 1833, and is a son of Dr. Gools B. and Rebecca (Gordon) CHAMBERS, natives of Halifax County, Va., and Robertson County, Tenn.  The father was born in 1802 and died in Fayette County in 1881.  The mother was born in 1805 and died in Fayette County in 1878.  They were married in Robertson County, Tenn., in 1823 and in 1836 moved to Fayette County and settled in the Fifteenth District nine miles north of Somerville, where they lived until they died.  In early life the father was engaged in agricultural pursuits. In 1844 he entered the Botanical Medical College at Memphis, Tenn., and after receiving his diploma returned home and was a successful practicing physician for seventeen years in Fayette County.  In 1862 he retired from practice and resumed farming.  Both parents were members of the Primitive Baptist Church. 

Our subject was the fifth of fourteen children. He received a good education, then gave his time exclusively to farming until 1884, when he established a store at Chambersville, and is now in the mercantile business in connection with farming, and besides a $4,000 stock of goods he owns 800 acres of land in Fayette County and is now erecting a handsome and unique residence in Chambersville. 

Mr. CHAMBERS has been married twice; first, October 25, 1859, to Miss Fannie E. WADE, who was born in Virginia in 1840 and died in January, 1864.  Three children were born to them, one dead.  He married again the same year Miss Mary E. CURLS, born in Mississippi in 1848, and by this marriage had eleven children – five sons and six daughters; one son and two daughters are dead.  Politically Mr. CHAMBERS is a Democrat. He does not belong to any church; his first wife was a Methodist.  He is an enterprising business man and in every respect a valuable citizen. 

Source:  Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee, 1887.