From poverty to affluence from destitution in which he had not whereon to lay his head to shelter beneath his own wine and fig tree, with all the comforts of life and not a few of its luxuries about him, this is in brief the history of Charles A. Marston, of near Marquette, in Bighorn County, a prominent ranch man and stock grower and a leading citizen of the county; and while his is an oft told tale in this western world its interest never flags its elements of tragedy and triumph are ever present its potent and inspiring example is always worthy of note and emulation. Mr. Marston was born in Maine on April 11, 1855, a scion of two substantial and thrifty families of that state. His parents were Gilbert B. and Martha M. (Shosey) Marston, who also were born and reared in Maine, and whose genealogy in that part of our country runs back in unbroken lines to colonial times. He attended the country schools of his day and neighborhood, learning life’s duties and getting his training for them rather in the daily experience of the woodsmen’s humble home than in academies of learning, scooping as it were but a handful here and there from the grateful invigorating waters of book knowledge as they danced and sparkled across the toilsome way, and when he was nineteen years of age with the self reliance and independence of his race and section, e left his paternal home and took up the contest with fate and the world for himself. He proceeded to California, reaching there in 1875 and remaining until 1880 engaged in dairying. He then removed to Oregon and entered he employ of John W. Chapman in the stock business. In his service he came to Montana and two years later went into the Yellowstone National Park and there conducted a butchering business for two years. In 1884 he came to Bighorn County, Wyoming without a single dollar of money and with nothing else to rely on but his own resolute spirit, physical health and general capacity for usefulness. He again entered the employ of Mr. Chapman and continued to work for him and a Frenchman Count Du Dore, the owner of a large cattle ranch on the Shoshone River. In 1887 he took up homestead and desert claims on the North Fork of the Shoshone River and began for himself a farming and stock growing industry, in which his progress has been steady sure and noticeable. He has 320 acres of good land on which he has been raising cattle and horses replacing the common stock as rapidly as he could with graded Herefords in cattle and with superior breeds in horses. In the meantime he has greatly improved his place by good fences and buildings brought much of it into a high state of cultivation producing the cereals alfalfa and hay in profitable quantities and making it a suitable home for a progressive wide awake and energetic American citizen. Where water was needed it was brought into his service from the Shoshone River he and C. L. Green, of this county being the first to irrigate from this source of supply. Mr. Marston is a Freemason, holding membership in Shoshone Lodge, U. D. of Cody, Wyoming. He married on May 27, 1901 to Mrs. Hattie F. Marston, who is like himself a native of Maine.
