Thomas Marshall (2 April 1730 – 22 June 1802) was a Virginia surveyor, planter, military officer soldier and politician who served in the House of Burgesses and briefly in the Virginia House of Delegates and helped form the state of Kentucky, but may be best known as the father of Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Marshall.

[5] His great-grandfather, another John Marshall, a captain of cavalry in the service of Charles I had emigrated to Virginia about 1650, and came to own a large plantation.

Marshall was qualified as a surveyor by the Virginia government (such examinations being one function of the then-small College of William and Mary).

When Fauquier County was established, its voters elected Thomas Harrison and Fairfax as their first two (part-time) representatives in the House of Burgesses.

After serving in that post for a year, he won election again to the part-time delegate position, but resigned in 1773 to become clerk of the new Dunmore County.

[10] A lieutenant in the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, Marshall participated in the Braddock Expedition against Fort Duquesne, under George Washington.

At the Battle of Brandywine, Thomas Marshall's command was placed in a wood on the right, and, though attacked by greatly superior numbers, maintained its position without losing an inch of ground until its ammunition was nearly expended and more than half its officers and one third of the soldiers were killed or wounded.

When paroled Marshall took advantage of the circumstance to make his first visit to Kentucky on horseback over the mountains, and then located the lands on which he subsequently lived in Woodford.

In 1783 Marshall was appointed surveyor general of the lands in Kentucky due to officers and soldier of Virginia's Continental Line.

Two years later, Marshall left his Fauquier County farm in the hands of a son and removed the rest of his family to Kentucky.