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September 27, 1914: Author Catherine Marshall Born

Catherine Marshal
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Author Catherine Marshall was born in Tennessee on September 27, 1914. In the late 1920s, her family moved to West Virginia and lived in Keyser, where she graduated from high school in 1932.

While attending Agnes Scott College in Georgia, she met the Rev. Peter Marshall, and they got married in Keyser in 1936. After their son’s birth in 1940, Catherine was homebound with tuberculosis for nearly three years.

In 1949, she faced another crisis when her 46-year-old husband, then chaplain of the U.S. Senate, died of a heart attack. She edited 16 of his sermons and prayers for the book Mr. Jones, Meet The Master, and completed his biography, A Man Called Peter.

In 1959, Catherine Marshall married editor Leonard E. LeSourd, and they collaborated as book publishers. Her best-loved novel, Christy, was based on her mother’s girlhood in the southern mountains. It spawned a TV series and movie, youth book series, and musical. Her inspirational autobiography, Meeting God at Every Turn, was published in 1980.

Catherine Marshall died in Florida in 1983 at age 68. Her second novel, Julie, was published a year later.