Marshall Kirk

Marshall Kenneth Kirk (8 Dec 1957 - approx. 28 Jul 2005) was a New England Historic Genealogical Society librarian, a noted writer and a researcher in neuropsychiatry. He is most well known as one of the co-authors of "After the Ball" a strategy for the GLBT movement in the 90's.

Background

Marshall was born in Norway, Maine, the third child of Roger Marchant and Kathleen Marie (Murphy) Kirk, and was raised in Mechanic Falls, Maine. He was valedictorian of his high school class and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1980, majoring in psychology, and writing his honor’s thesis on the testing of gifted children.

Genealogical research

His interest in his own colonial New England forebears broadened into the study of pre-American ancestry. He became internationally known as one of the three or four major American authorities on Medieval and ancient genealogy (Greece, Rome, Egypt, Persia, Armenia, the Merovingians and Carolingians).

Writing sometimes under his own name and at other times under the pseudonym “Kenneth W. Kirkpatrick,” he authored or co-authored several articles in the NEGHS Register and also wrote for the New Hampshire Genealogical Record, Vermont Genealogist and The Island Magazine. His accumulation of arguments to "build a case" for speculative identifications in the near English ancestry of New England immigrants was widely perceived as brilliant, and he published such pieces on the five Winslow brothers and Thomas Bradbury in the NEGHS Register (the second article is scheduled for 2006) and on John Cotton in the last 1999 issue of The New Hampshire Genealogical Record.

His massive research on Gov. Thomas Dudley was used by both Doug Richardson in Plantagenet Ancestry and in The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants (RD600) by Gary Boyd Roberts. Marshall was especially pleased by the prospect of an Edward III descent through Katherine Deighton (Dudley's second wife), Dennis and Stradling, and after publication an article in Foundations attempting to refute it, was strong in its defense.

Marshall also contributed to the fourth edition (1999) of the Genealogist’s Handbook for New England Research, the CD-ROM edition of Clarence A. Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700, and John A. Schutz, Legislators of the Massachusetts General Court, 1691–1780: A Biographical Dictionary (1997).

He was associate editor of The Mayflower Descendant from 2002 to 2003.

After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s

Kirk partnered with Hunter Madsen to write "After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ’90s." The book outlined a manifesto and strategy for the GLBT movement. It was published in 1989 and landed Kirk in the pages of Newsweek, Time and The Washington Post. The book is sometimes viewed as important to the success of the GLBT Movement in the 90's: " A partial explanation of the homosexual movement's success can be traced to the 1989 publication of After the Ball. Published with little fanfare, this book became the authoritative public relations manual for the homosexual agenda, and its authors presented the book as a distillation of public relations advice for the homosexual community." [[1]]

Trivia

• He was almost obsessively knowledgeable about weather (his brothers report that at age 10 his fellow townsmen in Mechanic Falls, Maine, preferred his forecasts to anything on television).

• Marshall suffered from severe migrane headaches that were preceeded by a strong desire to talk in in a rapid monologue. He found that if he gave into these "babbling fits" the headache would be alleviated.

• He had other medical problems and suffered from bouts of depression that required Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on three occasions. Because of the negative effects on his memory, he considered ECT to be the last alternative to avoid death.

• His knowledge of pharmacology was usually greater than that of anyone who treated him.

• When he died, he was found alone in his apartment by two friends. The cause of death has never been publically discussed.