Saturday gathering for Peggy Marsh, 1920-2021

A public memorial gathering to honor the life of Margaret “Peggy” Breed Marsh will take place on Saturday, Oct. 2 at 11 a.m. in the Lincoln Cemetery. There will be coffee, donuts, and Lincoln talk.

Marsh died in February at the age of 100. Her sons Alec and Alan provided this obituary tribute for the Lincoln Squirrel:

“Our mother Peggy was born in Boston and came of age in Cambridge, Mass. Her father, Stephen Alec Breed, was a mathematics instructor at MIT and her mother, Laura Post was from Boston. They had a large house on Brattle Street that became a boarding house for graduate student during the Depression.

“Peggy attended Brimmer May and Buckingham schools, then matriculated at Smith College like her mother. She graduated in June 1942 and immediately joined the Women’s Army Air Force, serving through the World War as a second Lieutenant. After her discharge she undertook doctoral studies in English at Radcliffe, earning a Ph.D. She met our father, Paul E. Marsh, as he was finishing his studies at Harvard and they were married in 1949. The Marshes moved to Lincoln in 1954 and lived there till near the end of their lives.

“Both Peggy and Paul taught school. Peggy was a professor and briefly Dean of Students at Wellesley College in the 1960s. She later worked at Polaroid. Both took a lively interest in town affairs, serving on innumerable committees: fence viewer, the School Committee, Planning Board, Water Commission, etc. Both were also involved in any number of projects that have made Lincoln what it is: Codman Community Farms, The Lincoln Review, and the town historic district, to name some. They even turned the red barn on Winter Street into a nursery school for a time. On foggy dawns on April 19th, Peggy would don a British uniform, saddle a horse, and ritually ‘capture’ Paul Revere at Minuteman National Historical Park.”