Marsh is buried in the middle of the cemetery on the left of the path (we drove up and parked in the back). His grave lies between his first wife, Rebecca, and his second wife, Eunice (who outlived him until she reached the ripe age of 96), and near his daughters Emogene and Ella. His simple marker has been broken in half for many years. Please make sure to leave the fallen part the way you found it so it is not exposed to the elements and damaged further.
At Federal Street Cemetery, you will find the grave of Dexter Marsh. Unlike some other characters in the fascinating story in the discovery of dinosaur tracks in the Connecticut River Valley, Marsh was not a man of means or education. A simple town laborer, he noticed some “turkey tracks” one day when laying pavement in Greenfield in 1835. As he separated two slabs, he observed tracks on one side and a cast on the other (sediment, mud in this case, had filled the tracks and solidified in their shape). This actual slab is on display in the Beneski Museum of Natural History (as part of the Hitchcock Ichnology Collection, one of the largest collections of dinosaur tracks in the world)!
In addition to continuing his manual work, Marsh became a prolific paleontologist and fossil salesman. He was a member of the elite scientific community, and his name was well known across America and even in Europe! He even built one of the first museums to exhibit dinosaur footprints in the country.
