In the 1870s, Liverpool native James Marsh had worked for the Texas and Pacific Railway in Dallas, where he met Mary Cecilia McCormick, originally from Kentucky.

[2] Young "Bill" Marsh showed an early interest in music, studying harmony, composition, and organ at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire beginning at age twelve.

At age sixteen, he had the opportunity to take lessons with Robert Hope-Jones on his famous electric organ at St. John's Church in nearby Birkenhead.

[2][3] Planning to only stay a year, Marsh moved to Fort Worth, Texas in September 1904 to work at his cousin Morris Berney's cotton business (which eventually became the well-known Neil P. Anderson firm).

By 1906, Marsh had left the cotton business and was working as the organist at First Presbyterian Church of Fort Worth, a position he held for 36 years.

[3] The family lived in a west Fort Worth home on the site of the present-day campus of the University of North Texas Health Science Center.