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Attorney and Civil War soldier, Tennessee Governor Albert S. Marks was born at Owensboro,
Kentucky, on October 16, 1836, the son of Elisha S. Marks. He grew up on his father's farm in
Daviess County. After the death of his father, Marks received little formal education but spent as
much time as possible reading fiction, history, biography, and the Greek and Roman classics. When
he was nineteen, Marks moved to Winchester, Tennessee, to accept a position in the law office of a
relative, Arthur S. Colyar. There he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1858. He practiced in
the firm of Colyar, Marks and Frizzell until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Marks supported the Southern Democratic ticket of Breckinridge and Lane in the presidential
election of 1860. Strongly opposed to secession, he ran as a Union candidate for district delegate
to the state convention but was defeated by Peter Turney. When Tennessee voted to withdraw
from the Union, though, he enlisted in the Confederate army, was elected captain, and later
promoted to colonel of the Seventeenth Tennessee Infantry. At the battle of Stones River on
December 31, 1862, Marks was wounded while leading a charge against a Federal battery. As a
result, surgeons amputated his right leg, and he endured a long hospital convalescence. When he
recovered, Marks was attached to the staff of General Nathan Bedford Forrest as judge advocate
and served in that capacity until the end of the war.
Colonel Marks married Novella Davis, daughter of John R. Davis of Wilson County, in April 1863 at
the Marshall County home of her uncle, J. M. Knight. After the war, Marks resumed his law
practice, first with Colyar until 1866, and then with James B. Fitzpatrick and T. D. Gregory until
1870, when he was elected chancellor of the Fourth Chancery Division.
Marks was selected as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1878 and elected that fall. The
most pressing problem of his administration involved the matter of the state debt, over which the
state was badly divided. At the Democratic convention in 1880, Marks declined a nomination for a
second term. Following his term in office, he returned to his home, the One Hundred Oaks mansion
in Winchester, and resumed his law practice. He continued to be active in state and national
politics, and in 1888 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He died at Nashville
on November 4, 1891.
John H. Thweatt, Tennessee State Library and Archives
Suggested Reading(s): Margaret I. Phillips, The Governors of Tennessee (1978).
See Also: BATTLE OF STONES RIVER; ARTHUR S. COLYAR; NATHAN B. FORREST; STATE DEBT
CONTROVERSY; PETER TURNEY
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