My Genealogy Hound

Judge Neal Martin, senior member of the firm of Neal Martin & Co., general merchants at Martinstown, is a native of Randolph County, Mo., and was born in 1826. He is the sixth of nine children born to Henry and Mary (Murphy) Martin, natives of North Carolina and Kentucky, respectively. The father, when about eighteen, went to Kentucky, where he was first married, and about 1820 moved to Randolph County, Mo., where he died in 1853. He was a farmer by occupation, and served many years as justice of the peace. His first wife died in 1837, and he afterward married Mary Thompson. Neal Martin was reared at home and educated at the rustic log school-house of the forest. He was united in marriage in 1855 to Miss Pamelia, daughter of Dr. A. W. and Frances Lane, formerly of Virginia. Mrs. Martin was born in Randolph County in 1838, and died in 1874, leaving a family of four sons and one daughter: Noah, John Wesley and Thomas Presley (twins), Hugh Marshall, and Mary F. (the eldest child, and the wife of C. C. Brown). In 1874 Mr. Martin married Mrs. Narcissa J. Sorell, who was born in 1836, and is a sister of his first wife. In 1855 he went to Milan, and the next year located in Elm Township, Putnam County, seventeen miles southeast of Unionville, where he purchased several acres of land, and established the town of Martinstown. Here he has since engaged in the mercantile business with the exception of six months, in the year 1862, when he was appointed county treasurer, and discharged the duties of that office. In 1868 he was elected county judge of the Eastern District, and served as such four years with credit. He was township clerk three years, notary public eight years, and was the first postmaster of Martinstown, to which position he was appointed in 1857, and served until 1862. In 1876 he was again appointed to the office, and has held same ever since. He is one of the enterprising and active business men of the county, and is a director of the Marshall National Bank at Unionville. He is a man of undoubted integrity, who has a host of admiring friends, and a hearty promoter of all laudable public enterprises. In politics he was reared a Whig, and cast his first presidential vote for Gen. Taylor, but since the war has been a conservative Republican. He is a member of the United Brethren Church as was his wife, and also a life member of the Home and Foreign Missionary Society.