William Marley, the first of four generations of wooden shoe dancers called The Dancing Marleys, was born in 1870 in Taunton, Massachusetts, of Irish Catholic immigrant parents. As a child, he learned wooden shoe dancing, also called American Clog, a style of percussive stepping that extended a distinctive American form of wooden shoe dance performance on the American stage. In 1899 William married Margaret Donovan, also of Irish Catholic parentage; they left Taunton to work in a mill in Rockville, Connecticut, close to Margaret's home in East Windsor. Several of the Rockville mills were owned by people from Lancashire, England, giving hem an ethnic tie to the "Lancashire" clog dances. Marley, who was an indispensable entertainer, became an instant local personality who regarded clog dancing as a professional enterprise and a serious form of exercise. He was soon teaching and performing American clog to locals.

Marley and Farley (a non-family tradition dueo or solo (c. 1895-1915): By 1890 William Marley teamed William "Professor" Farley, a Taunton barber, and formed the wooden-shoe dancing team of Marley and Farley; their performances reconstructed the "Lancashire Clog Hornpipe" which had first been performed in Boston in 1845. The duo performed from 1895 to 1915, after which time Farley went back to barbering and Marley formed a new duo with Dugan; they danced on the Keith vaudeville circuit until 1923.

The Dancing Marleys: William Marley and Jim Marley (1915-1923): When William Marley's second son, Jim, was fifteen, William saw him perform an Irish jig at St. Bernard's Catholic School and decided to teach him the clog dances. They performed as a father and son act, The Dancing Marleys, without wearing the traditional knee britches, and in wooden-soled shoes that looked like "Oxfords" rather than the traditional wooden-soled Lancashire "clogs."

The Dancing Marleys: Family Act (1923-1929): By 1923, the duet had incorporated into a family act, The Marley Family or "The Dancing Marleys" with the three youngest girls in the family (Matty, Ann, and baby Gert); dancing with the accompaniment by Margaret Donovan Marley on piano, oldest brother Bill, who was the Connecticut State Banjo champion, and younger Marley brother Dan on Mandolin and curtains. This was a professional act with many daily hours of practice; the girls practiced on a 20-foot by 3'-foot roll-up mat of maple strips. To their repertory they added a jump-rope waltz clog, Buck and Wing, Waltz Clog, and Pedestal Clog dances.

The Dancing Marley: Jim and Anna Marley (1929-1936): On tour with Major Bowes' Unit#1, the brother and sister act performed an eight-minute act that consisted of Buck and Wing, Pedestal Clog and Waltz Clog. Their show also included imitations of Bill Robinson and Pat Rooney, the Irish-American waltz clog dancer. Their Buck and Wing, which was originally danced to "Soldier's Joy," was danced to "Yankee Doodle Dandy" because, as Jim said, "he was an American." The pair continued to dance locally. In 1937, when Major Bowes contacted them for a second tour to England, Jim canceled at the last minute and Anna (at age nineteen) was persuaded by the family not to go alone. They returned to mill work through World War II but continued to perform "with Irish identity," at St. Patrick's Day and Hibernian Society concerts and the local "Minstrels," as local variety shows were called throughout New England after a revival in the 1920s. Anna's last fling with the Major Bowes connection came in 1947 when she danced solo, again on the radio, for the Ted Mack Amateur Hour (1947) just before it went on television.

The Marleys in Local Minstrels (1944- ca. 1960): In 1946, a program lists Jim Marley with his daughter Eleanor (Marley Lessig) dancing a Buck and Wing, with Anna Marley on piano.

The Anna Marley School of Dance opened in 1946 and operated until 1986.

The New Dancing Marleys (1989-present): In 1989, Tony Barrand and Kari Smith were added to the wooden-shoe dancing family that had lasted four generations.

[Source: Anthony G. Barrand and Kathryn Kari A. Smith, "A New England Family Tradition of ‘Lancashire' Clog: Issues of Ethnicity and Family Identity in American Wooden Shoe Dancing," Proceeding of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Dance in the Millennium Conference, Washington, D.C. (2000)]