Jehu Foster Marshall and wife Elizabeth DeBruhl Marshall

Southern Sentinel  Jehu Foster Marshall

E. C. Sanford

Jehu Foster Marshall of Ocala was a supplier of goods, including

whiskey and sugar to the Confederacy.  His plantation was a major supplier of sugar until the end of the war when Federal troops overran the plantation and burned or destroyed the sugar mill and all the production.  Marshall shipped his goods by way of Col. Hubbart I Hart’s  HARTLINE STEAMBOAT LINE, on Hart’s, James Burt, and Capt. Richard J Adams Silver Springs plantation.   Marshall’s plantation was raided on March 10, 1865 by the 3^rd Union Colored Infantry, led by Sgt. Major Henry James.  The raid was repelled by Capt. J J Dickinson (“Florida’s Swamp Fox”), which ended all Union presence in Marion County Florida, and along the Oklawaha River. April 2, 1865, Richmond fell Jefferson Davis and his wife’s property was seized, May 1865, at David Yulee’s Cottonwood Plantation near Gainesville at a place called Irwinville, Ga. Lola Sanchez, Confederate spy, was a resident of Union occupied Palatka, who provided information to both Hart and Dickinson during the war and was paid in Mexican silver dollars in May 1865.  Elizabeth DeBruhl Marshall operated the sugar plantation until it was destroyed in 1865.  Elizabeth DeBruhl Marshall

lost her 17 year old brother William Jesse to a hunting accident, her father

Jesse DeBruhl was killed when a tree fell on him in 1860 in Columbia County Florida where he was clearing land on another of his several plantations. Her husband Jehu Foster Marshall was killed in 1863 at the battle of Second Manasses.  Her father- in- law Dr. Marshall of Abbeville owner of White Hall plantation died soon after the end of the war.  He divided up his 3,760 acre plantation among his slaves.  Many of their descendants still live on the land. When Jefferson Davis's party was fleeing south with the Confederate cabinet and the treasury they stopped twice in Abbeville once at White Hall plantation.  The treasury then went to Washington Ga, from there into legend.  It has never been found or recovered.  Jefferson Davis and his party were captured by Union cavalry but they only had a few dollars in gold on them.  Jehu Foster Marshall had a sugar plantation in Ocala

Florida where he shipped goods by steamboat.  It was rumored that Breckenridge hired a boat and took the remaining treasury to Cuba.

Judah P. Benjamin was rumored to have taken a large portion of the treasury

to England.  He lived out his life in England.

All that is really known is it was loaded on a train in Richmond guarded
by a detachment of the Confederate Navy.  The Federal government
owned the contents the moment Lee surrendered.  Nobody guarding
the treasury had any incentive to turn it over to the Feds. As long as
they were on the train the weight of the gold and coins weren't a
problem
but when they de- trained with all that weight then they needed wagons
and horses which were at a premium.  The only "friends" were recently
paroled
Confederate Calvary roaming throughout.  The Federal Calvary was hot on
the trail looking for old Jeff Davis.  If the Feds took the treasury they found
with Jeff Davis's party then they weren't talking.  If the treasury was robbed
by bands of ex confederate Calvary they weren't talking either. This leaves
the "honest" ex navy guards who could have simply drove the wagons away
never to be seen and divided up the spoils.  The interesting part of the flight
was the return to the Marshall plantation the second time when the Federal
Calvary was pressing too close.  It is probably buried under lake Norman
or Lake Marion or some Interstate highway fill.