Meet Thaddeus Marshall (1852- 1930) - an African American Street Vendor from Rutherford who is "the owner of the humble garden tool that inspired William Carlos Williams’s classic poem, 'The Red Wheelbarrow'", first published in 1923.

In 1905, Thaddeus Marshall purchased a plot of land from William Nevins Crane and had a house built at what became 11 Elm Street where he and his wife, Alice (nee Holmes) raised their children, including two boys, Hiram and Milton, who later became WWI soldiers.

Dr. William Carlos Williams frequently visited the Marshall house on Elm Street to provide medical assistance to Mrs. Marshall and the Marshall children and became very fond of Marshall and his family. Williams, who had been writing poetry since he was a student in high school, was inspired to write a poem called “The Red Wheelbarrow” based upon his rainy-day observations of Marshall's chickens and a red wheelbarrow in the backyard there beside the chicken coops at 11 Elm Street. Dr. Williams had written hundreds of poems, but he insisted his favorite was “The Red Wheelbarrow” and was quoted as saying “The sight impressed me somehow as about the most important, the most integral that it had ever been my pleasure to gaze upon.”

Thaddeus Marshall died in 1930 at the age of 77 and was buried in an unmarked grave at East Ridgelawn Cemetery in Clifton. It was not until July 18, 2015, that a marker was placed on Marshall’s grave. This was made possible due to the efforts of Rod Leith, Rutherford Historian, who raised the funds for this marker with donations from Teresa Marshall Hale, Marshall’s great-granddaughter and Daphne Willliams Fox, a granddaughter of William Carlos Williams, among others.

(Excerpts / facts taken from “The Forgotten Man Behind William Carlos Williams’s ‘Red WheelBarrow’" by Jennifer Schuessler, July 6, 2015, The New York Times and Rod Leith, Rutherford Historian.)

(Photos: Thaddeus Marshall - Courtesy of Teresa Marshall Hall and Mark Giordano; William Carlos Williams -

Thaddeus Marshall

Photo Courtesy of Courtesy of Teresa Marshall Hall and Mark Giordano

William Carlos Williams

Photo Courtesy of The Meadowlands Museum