Baxter Marsh was a carpenter in Greenfield, who settled with his wife, Jane H. Ware Marsh, in Amherst in 1873. He built several houses in town and in 1896 he probably was the builder of his own large Georgian Revival home on Main Street. Rooms were rented out to instructors working at nearby Amherst College including, from 1918 to 1920, Robert Frost. Another tenant was literature professor John Erskine, who included reminiscences of his residence in the Marsh House in his book, The Memory of Certain Persons (1947). The Baxters’ son, Edward Baxter Marsh, attended Amherst and later continued to reside in his own house in town. The house was later used by the Amherst Record and in 1989 it was moved from 109 to 401 Main Street to make way for the new Police Department building.