GORHAM – Growing up on a Westbrook farm, Frances (Knight) Marsh easily handled horse reins as a young girl. As a great-grandmother, she just as easily handled logging online and e-mail.

At 92, Marsh – matriarch of a well-known local family, teacher, writer and friend of many – enjoyed excellent health and remained busy and active. In her Gorham home Oct. 21, she reconciled her checkbook, filled out her absentee ballot and then went to sleep. She never woke up.

“She had just a wonderful life,” said her son, Eben Marsh, a former Gorham town manager. “I don’t ever remember her having a bad day.”

After a career in education, Marsh retired in 1977. She was well known as a kindergarten teacher in Standish and Westbrook and accomplished in a multitude of interests. Inspiring a long list of friends with her poetry, photos and e-mail messages, she was a community sparkplug.

As a youngster, Marsh helped her grandfather, Ben Knight of Smiling Hill Farm, with field and barn chores. In the days before wagons gave way to trucks, Marsh, who was born in 1918, would travel over dirt roads through surrounding towns with her grandfather buying and selling cattle.

Her brother, Roger Knight, said this week his sister at 5 years old drove a horse hitched to a wagon towing a half-dozen cattle.

“She was very close to her grandfather,” Knight recalled.

Early life on the farm stayed with her and nurtured her appreciation of nature. Knight said his sister also researched and wrote about history, especially accounts in North Scarborough and South Gorham, rural villages and fields she trod as a child.

A genealogist, she was instrumental in locating the gravesite of Col. Thomas Westbrook in 1976. He had been buried secretly in an unmarked grave in 1744 on the farm of her ancestors, the colonel’s sister and brother-in-law, Nathan and Mary Westbrook Knight.

Marsh wrote a booklet about a red rose bush transplanted in Gorham from her childhood home on the historic farm. A few years ago, Marsh contributed a guest column to the American Journal about her accounts as a witness of ice cutting in South Gorham.

She married Maynard Marsh in 1941. He was a game warden, who rose to commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“Her husband was a legend in the warden service,” said Rodney Quinn, Gorham historian and American Journal columnist.

A widely known family, Frances and Maynard Marsh had three children: John, of West Gardiner, a retired chief warden and a former legislator; Eben, of Cape Elizabeth, now on the staff at the Greater Portland Council of Governments; and Mary, of Gorham, who was a principal in South Portland and namesake of a school in the city, since razed. Mary Marsh died in 2002.

Longtime friends Martha Harris and her sister, Linda Faatz, attended Gorham schools with the Marsh children. Harris recalled that Frances Marsh wrote poetry and was a talented nature photographer.

“One remarkable woman in many, many ways,” Harris said.

Faatz recalled that Marsh was always positive.

“I’ll miss her terribly,” Faatz said. “She had so many friends.”

Eben Marsh said on the evening she died, his mother had hand-addressed 150 envelopes for that week’s mailing. He said he has received numerous cards from his mother’s friends, many that he didn’t know. “It was incredible,” he said.

Knight said his sister corresponded with senior citizens and shut-ins.

“She had a quite a list,” Knight said. And Faatz said Marsh inspired “those who needed a little lift.”

Harris said Marsh was competent on a computer. “She was about to join Facebook,” Harris said.

Eben Marsh said his mother utilized the Internet for research.

“Well, let’s Google it,” he said was her favorite saying.

Wilma (Gould) Johnson of Eliot, who also attended Gorham schools with the Marsh children, in recent years regularly exchanged e-mails with her. Johnson said Marsh was a storyteller and she was accurate.

“There’s more to this story, if you’re interested,” she said Marsh would e-mail. “She used to bait and hook me,” Johnson said.

Marsh enjoyed varied interests. She was an artist and a professional football fan. She enjoyed doll collecting and was noted for her knitting. Eben Marsh said his mother made 25 wool caps for a great-granddaughter’s soccer team. She also enjoyed baking. Faatz recalled watching Marsh roll out dough for molasses cookies. “Dough covered the whole counter,” Faatz said.

Knight said his sister kept her herself busy and said she appreciated the beauty of nature. She studied wildlife, fed birds in her back yard and loved animals.

Roger Knight said his sister, who was 17 years his senior, became a mother figure when their mother died when he was 11.

“She took over some responsibilities of raising a teenager,” Knight said, and said his sister served as the grandmother his children never had.

A widow, Marsh had six grandchildren of her own and eight great-grandchildren.

The Rev. Philip Shearman officiated her funeral.

“It was the biggest I’ve ever seen in Gorham,” Quinn said.

Bride Frances Knight married Maynard Marsh in 1941. She was raised on Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook and died at her home in Gorham last month. Courtesy photo

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