Dates

• Existence: 1908 - 1978

Biographical Note

Marvin Harmon Neel was born in Bland County, Virginia, on June 25, 1908, to Charles Henry Neel and Annie E. (Umbarger) Neel. He was the oldest of nine children. By 1933, he married Mayme Brown (1906-2006) and they had a daughter, born around 1934. Neel served as the Ceres postmaster beginning in 1930 and also as a rural carrier until he retired from the Postal Service in the late 1950s. Neel began the acquiring presses and established the Backwoods Press in Ceres, Virginia, in 1933. The press would run consistently until the late 1950s and produced a few publications from 1958 until about 1967, when Neel retired from the printing business. He also took up writing in the early 1930s and continued that until the last few years before his death. He was associated with a number of amateur journalism, publishing, and other writing organizations. Marvin Neel died on August 7, 1978, and is buried in the Red Oak Cemetery, Ceres, Virginia.

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