Marshall Ayres, Jr. was born on February 20, 1839,[REF] in Griggsville, Illinois, to father Marshall Ayres and mother Hannah (Lombard) Ayers, who were native to Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.
Just two years later, on October 30, 1889, Ayres married a girl twenty years younger, Francis N. Nobel (1857-1915) of Provincetown, Massachusetts, daughter of Rev. Edward W. Noble of Cambridge.