I had save the an abstract of the will of Nicholas Bickers from some trip to a library at some point even though I didn't understand it at the time. Well, now I do understand it, and I have a few questions to ask in hopes that someone can tell me about the Marshall family. Will of Nicholas Bickers....having already given to my son (someone wrote in the margin in blue ink, Joel) his full share of my estate, I give and devise to him the sum of twenty five cents only....to my beloved wife, Jane....all the estate of which I may die possessed except for two feather beds and their furniture and two cows and calves....to my sons, Moses and William, each a feather bed and furniture and a cow and a calf...to my son Benjamin C. at the death of my wife, the land on which he resides, containing by survey made by Reuben Lindsay, seventy acres...I lend to my daughter, Joanna Marshall...to daughter, Polly Hawkins, being well off and having no children and my other children being all poor...one dollar only...I give to my son Joel, ....appoint my friends John Taylor and William Quarles, executors...this 17th day of March 1825.... At a court held.....27th June 1836....proved....on motion of Coleman Marshall (who married a daughter of the testator)....with Benjamin Hawkins and John Payne, .... Ok what I now know is that Benjamin Hawkins was the uncle to my Thomas R. Hawkins...Benjamin is involved with many land dealings and his wife is always names as Mary or Polly. So this man that Nicholas Bickers refers to as being rich is Thomas's uncle. When Benjamin dies, he leaves all of his land to his NEPHEW Thomas R. Hawkins....so it seems to support the information above that Benjamin and Mary/Polly were childless. I have thought that Coleman Marshall was married to a Hawkins because he appears in so many of their dealings. And he is one of the men present in Brother Hawkins's home when the Zion Baptist Church was formed: > > About three and one half miles south of Orange in the home of Brother > Hawkins, with James Arnold, Roger Mallory, Nicolas Bickers, Joseph > Atkins (clerk), James Perry (deacon), Killie Hoard, Benjamin Hawkins, > Hamlet Sanford, John Rogers (deacon), William Bell, William Mallory, > William Hancock, William Embry, Coleman Marshall (deacon), Henry > Perry, John Churchill Gordon (pastor), and Thomas Hawkins, seventeen > in all But here it is clearly stated that Coleman Marshall had married Nicholas Bickers's daughter. So Coleman Marshall was a brother-in-law to Benjamin Hawkins. Can anyone fill in anymore facts about Coleman Marshall? I keep thinking that there may be some clue to the Marshall family as to where my name comes from.....Thomas R. Hawkins has a grandson named Jesse Marshall Hawkins. The Jesse comes from my gr-grandfather's mother's side of the family....perhaps the Marshall does too....But my dad was named after Jesse Marshall and goes by Marshall ....and I am the female version: Marsha