He moved to Corsicana, Texas, where Marsalis and a partner started a wholesale grocery house.
This was reportedly one of "the largest and most successful operations of its kind in the South, doing $750,000 worth of business annually by 1877.
"[2] Marsalis and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Josephine Crowdus, the daughter of a prominent Dallas physician and future mayor, married November 29, 1873.
Armstrong objected and immediately dissolved the partnership, taking the grocery concerns; Marsalis took the real estate holdings.
[2] [4] There was a public bath project planned at Kidd Springs, and, in various promotional material, the area was compared to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Delayed by the 1893 depression, Ruthmeade Place was annexed to the city in 1889; however, development did not begin in earnest until 1905.
The houses in the area were wood frame bungalows, predominantly Craftsman or Prairie style.
When the economy declined, he was forced to lease the structure to M. Thomas Edgerton, who planned to open a girls' school.
[3] According to the Handbook of Texas Online, not much was known or had been published about the remainder of Marsalis's life; he moved to New York and reportedly died in poverty some years later.
He died April 20, 1919, in Paterson, NJ and is buried in Cedar Lawn Cemetery [8] [9] According to Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, the 1910 Census shows his residence as New York City while local papers announced his death in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1919.