To celebrate this unique breed, the county holds an annual festival known as "Goats, Music and More," drawing visitors from around the world.

[citation needed] It was named after the American jurist John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Planters had depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans to work the commodity crops of tobacco and hemp, as well as care for thoroughbred horses and other quality livestock.

After the war, blacks and whites struggled to adjust to emancipation and a free labor market.

Freedmen founded Needmore as a community in Marshall County after the Civil War where they could live as neighbors and be relatively free of white supervision.

In the period after Reconstruction and into the early 20th century, whites in Marshall County committed eight lynchings of African Americans.

Governor James B. Frazier offered a reward for information, as Whitecaps were blamed for the deaths, and the state was trying to eliminate this secret, vigilante group.

[5] In the early 20th century, numerous African Americans left the county during the period of the Great Migration to northern and midwestern industrial cities for work.

Three Tennessee governors— Henry Horton, Jim Nance McCord, and Buford Ellington— were each living in Marshall County at the time of their election as governor.