Governor's
Mansion
Museum

James Wright Gordon moved to the Marshall area in 1835 and by 1839 he was a well know attorney and politician.  He was confident that Marshall would be come the state capitol and that he would be Governor.  As running for this office, he built what we now call the Governor’s Mansion Museum high atop what the city called ‘Capitol Hill’.  In a primary vote for the Whig party, he came in second, that put him on the ballot as lieutenant governor with Woodbridge running for governor.  And they won.  But the next year Woodbridge was appointed to the US Senate Seat so in 1841, J. Wright Gordon, the lieutenant governor, became Michigan’s third Governor.

Since the term for governor at that time was only two years, he was governor for just one.  But in that year he was the first Michigan Governor to pardon a convicted slave.

After his term as Governor, he continued to live with his family in this house and worked as an attorney in the region.  This included being active with Marshall’s Crosswhite Case in 1847.  After this he was appointed US Consul to Brazil in 1850.  In December of 1850, word came back that he had died in Pernambuco, Brazil.

His family continued to live in this house until the 1880s then remained as a private home until the 1960s.  At that point the Mary Marshall Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution agreed to take over the membership and the museum and has continued for over fifty years now.