Some stories are so good you need them to be true. That’s the case with the sub-Rosa murders allegedly committed by my eighth great-grandmother Mary Markham. There are family legends, and then there are family legends. This one certainly falls into the latter category. But consider that the person telling it, Eliza Colston, was 230 years closer to the events. Moreover, she was the sister of Chief Justice John Marshall.
Still, we’re talking about events that unfolded in the early 1700s. A little background is required to fully appreciate the story. Let’s take the Wayback Machine back to the time of John “of the forest” Marshall (1701-1752), who earned this moniker by oddly building his home in the woods instead of along the gorgeous banks of Mattox Creek, which drains into the Potomac. John married Elizabeth Markham (1704-1779), daughter of the legendary John Markham. Elizabeth Markham, whose mother is reputed to have co-habited with Blackbeard, was alive for the first 23 years of Colston’s life and they lived in the same general vicinity, Fauquier County Virginia.
As William McClung Paxton writes in the seminal tome, “The Marshall Family,” tradition has gone wild over the career of John Markham. One legend makes him a British peer, another calls him a pirate, a third insists upon his being the buccaneer Blackbeard, which he probably wasn’t. “But all authority agree in pronouncing him a handsome, dashing and fascinating gentleman, and a daring, cruel and adroit villain.”
Paxton, a Marshall, who built an incredibly detailed Marshall family tree that has stood the test of time with only a few dents, relied on his nephew, Col. Thomas M. Green, to tell the story of John Marshall. Paxon admired Green’s skill and power in interpreting family traditions and deciphering legends. Green wrote:
“There lived near the family, a John Markham, an Englishman with a peculiar history. He was by birth a gentleman, as the term is used in England, and of mixed Anglo-Saxon lineage. [He] had been an officer in the British Navy, had killed his captain in a duel in the West Indies, and had taken refuge in Virginia, where he had engaged in mercantile pursuits, and had married the widow of a merchant, much older than himself, by whom he had no children, but of whose whole property he managed to obtain possession.
“His wife died, and he returned to England, sold a small inherited estate which had come down to him from Anglo-Saxon ancestors, who had owned it before the conquest, for which one of his descendants used to say he ought to have been hung, and eloped with and married a young English girl, with whom he returned to Virginia, and by whom he had seventeen daughters and one son.
“A shrewd, money-getting, out-breaking, lawless, self-witted, large-brained, devil-defying man was this John Markham, if all accounts of him be true, respecting neither God nor man, and fearing neither; and every now and then there breaks out in his race the genuine Markham streak. His son, named John, gobbled up all the paternal estate, and was the father of Commodore James Markham, a distinguished officer of the Virginia Navy during the Revolution.
“One of the first of John Markham’s seventeen daughters was the grandmother of the late T. Daviess Oarneal, well known in Cincinnati and throughout central Kentucky. Another was the ancestress of Major McBae, formerly Commandant of the Barracks at Newport; of George McRae of Mississippi, and of the family of that name, of South Carolina. One of the youngest, Elizabeth, married Captain John [of the forest] Marshall.”
So, how does all this relate to Blackbeard the pirate, if John Markum wasn’t Blackbeard? For that, Paxton relied on the transcription of a story told by Eliza Colston, Chief Justice John Marshall’s oldest sister, who loved to tell family histories. Colston filled in the missing details, according to “one who sat by her feet.”
“Blackbeard’s correct name was Finch,” Colston related, getting off to a less than authoritative start — Blackbeard’s name was Teach. “The scene of his piratical (check) career was the American coast and the West Indies, and the time was the early quarter of the eighteenth century.
“Prior to the death of Blackbeard, there lived in Alexandria, Va., a merchant, who had acquired a large fortune by trade. He was a married man, and he and his wife were elderly people. In their employ was a young man named John Markham. [This would be the John Markham in the previous tale.] The old merchant died, and his widow inherited all his property. Markham persuaded her to marry him, and he thus acquired a large fortune.
“Sometime after the marriage, his business called him to England. The handsome, but unprincipled young man, here met a beautiful young lady, attending a boarding school, and prevailed on her to elope with him, and a mock marriage was imposed on her.
“On their arrival, the imposition was exposed, and great sympathy was expressed for the lovely girl. Regarding her as free, a gentleman proposed honorable marriage to her. Markham was incensed, and challenged and killed him. His real wife was greatly mortified, and soon died. Markham claimed and appropriated her whole estate, which he had not already squandered. He was now legally married to the young English girl, and a large family of children was born to them. But Markham died, and the widow found herself immensely wealthy. Her beauty was only matured, and her gayety made her a leader in society.
“At this time there appeared in Alexandria a handsome young Englishman, wearing a rich naval uniform. He seemed to have an abundance of money, and had the address to recommend himself to the good graces of the blooming widow. Infatuated with him, the widow married him, and placed all her fortune under his control. When their honeymoon was ended, and the adventurer had possessed himself of all her property, he threw off restraint, and introduced into her house a set of rough and desperate companions, and made it the scene of boisterous revels.
“When his wife remonstrated, he struck her, and treated her with brutal contempt. Her children were purposely sent away, or, frightened by the disorderly conduct beneath their mother’s roof, fled to Westmoreland County and found protection, from her uncles, William and Lewis. Elizabeth found a home with the widow of Thomas Marshall. She had been finely educated, and possessed not only beauty but the highest accomplishments of the day.
“Her mother now discovered that she had married Blackbeard, the notorious buccaneer. When his identity was exposed, he gathered all and hastily departed to his ship. But female constancy clings to the most brutal and abandoned of husbands. She was often present at his orgies, and on one occasion, when two villains intended to assassinate Blackbeard, and were seated at table, one on his right and the other on his left, she held two pistols beneath the table, and drawing a trigger with each hand at the same moment, the miscreants fell dead at the feet of her unworthy lord.
“But the ungrateful husband is said to have treated her with such cruelty that she died from the effects of a kick given her in one of his revels. But Blackbeard did not long survive his wife. Lieut. Maynard outwitted him on the North Carolina coast, and his riddled body, hung in chains, was suspended at Williamsburg as a warning to outlaws.”