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Note: Biography 1894: Farmer, Sec 8; P.O. Newton; born in Highland Co., OH, in 1825; located his land in this Co.,. in 1856, and moved here in 1857. He married Miss Ann Eliza Russell in 1847; she was born in Buckingham Co., Va., in 1830; their children are Laura A., John W., Cyntha P., Zillah J., Hamer E. and Bower T. They are members of the M. E. Church, and Greenback in politics. Mr. Murphy has been Justice of the Peace two years, and School Director from 1858 to 1876, and President of the Board several terms. Owns 320 acres, valued at $40 per acre. He is Past Master of Subordinate Grange of Buena Vista Twp., 544; has been Deputy Master of State Grange P. H., four years, and Lecturer of Iowa State Grange P. of H., and a member of Masonic Order twenty-eight years; High Priest of Gebel Chapter two years. Biography 1912: Everybody in Jasper Co.,. knew J. W. Murphy. Tall and rugged as an oak, with kindly face and great booming voice, Mr. Murphy was as unique a specimen of sturdy American manhood as the great State of Iowa affords. The subject of this review was united in marriage, September 19, 1847, to Ann Eliza Russell, daughter of Samuel and Mary P. Russell. She was a native of Virginia, born in Buckingham Co., February 21, 1830. They were married at what is now Russell Station in Highland Co., OH. Mr. Murphy was, as he put it, three-eighths Irish, one-eighth Highland Scotch and four-eighths English. His mother's people were Quakers clear back from the beginning of that religion. She joined the Methodist Episcopal Church after she was married. Mrs. Murphy's father died in Jasper Co.,. in 1876, while visiting here with his children. Her mother was born in 1809 and died in 1897. Mrs. Murphy was one of seven children, but four of whom are now living, namely: John W. Russell, living in Newton; Samuel G., living in Newton; and Mary J., wife of Caleb Bennett, living in Chattanooga, Tennessee. One brother, the youngest, Robert H., served in the War of the Rebellion. He enlisted in CA and died in a hospital in San Francisco from sickness contracted during the war, soon after being discharged . To Mr. and Mrs. Murphy were born eight children: Laura Alice, born June 12, 1854, wife of John Y. Swigart, now living in Mexico; John W., born May 16, 1857, a Presbyterian minister at American Fort, Utah, married Mertie Sterns, and this couple have one child, a girl; Cynthia P., born October 11, 1859, wife of Alec Woods, lives in Jasper Co., and they have four boys; Zella J., born November 23, 1862, married Jefferson Miller, died March 17, 1888, in NE, left three children, two boys and a girl; Zilla, Mrs. James Warren, died on the Kansas and Nebraska line and is buried in NE; Clement Seymour, born July 14, 1864, died in infancy; Hamer Elsworth, born August 29, 1866, married Mary Atwood, now lives in Newton, a graduate of chiropractic healing, has one child, a boy; Roswell Trimble, born May 27, 1869, died in infancy; Bower Thrap, born October 20, 1870, married Edith Blackwood, lives on a farm in Jasper Co., IA. They have five children, three boys and two girls. On October 17, 1857, Mr. Murphy with his wife and family, consisting at that time of two children, removed from Ohio to Jasper Co., Iowa. He and his brother, James, bought three hundred acres of land, paying eight dollars per acre for the same. This land was afterwards divided, and Mr. Murphy afterwards added to his portion until he owned two hundred and ten acres. Probably no other man in Jasper Co.,. took the part in public affairs that Mr. Murphy did. He served as Twp. Clerk, Trustee, Justice of the Peace, Road Supervisor, and was a member of the board of school directors for eighteen years consecutively. In April 1858, when he was elected secretary of the school board, the Township was without a schoolhouse and there were no sub-districts. John C. Scott and Mr. Murphy together evolved the plan of placing a school house in the center of every four adjoining sections where practical, the first one in the Co.,. being the Slagel Schoolhouse, in Hixon's Grove. This plan was afterward followed throughout the Co., Mr. Murphy was one of the organizers of the Jasper County Farmers Mutual Association, being its first secretary, which office he held for fifteen years. He was secretary of the IA State Grange six years and four years as traveling lecturer for that organization. Both he and his wife were charter members of the Methodist Protestant Church, which was organized in Hixon's Grove in 1867, Mr. Murphy helped build it and has acted as its secretary and treasurer and was honored by every office in the gift of the Church. On several occasions he was representative of the Iowa conference to the general conference of the United States of that Church; and was the secretary of Iowa state conference of the Church for the past forty years and it was at one of its meetings that he was taken ill and died. He had been postmaster of Murphy post office since its establishment in 1891. He was the railroad agent of this station, also owned its one store. He was a member of Newton Lodge No. 39, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. He was made a Mason at Lynchburg, OH, June 24, 1850. He was also a member of the chapter and council of that order. In politics Mr. Murphy had been a Democrat, ("hard money") Greenbacker and Prohibitionist. Later he was a Socialist. Note: John Wildman Murphy is the family member who went to San Francisco, CA in about 1895 to track down the remains of his brother-in-law Robert Henry Russell who died there of disease in 1866. He returned with Robert Henry's bones and re-interred them in the Russell family plot with Robert's aging mother looking on. -RDR 10/02 The Town of Murphy (Buena Vista Township) Kellogg Historical Society - Vol.III - 1983 Permission to reprint granted by Judy Parson on October 25, 2002. In the fall of 1857, John W. Murphy and Ann Eliza, his wife, with their two children, came into the area later known as the Murphy neighborhood. By 1866, four of John's brothers and sisters had settled within a mile of John's home. Others came, both before and after - the Russells, Hixons, Slagels, Davises, Adamsons, Fenners, Herrings, Nutts and Livingstons. Here they raised their families and built their lives and the community. The railroad came up from the southeast through the Murphy land in 1880. A siding was installed, stockyards established, and over the years a great variety and quantity of livestock, grain, merchandise, mail, and people were transported to and from the Murphy station. John Murphy put up a store building in late 1890, shortly after the siding went in; and in 1891 both the Murphy store and the Murphy post office began operations. John was postmaster until rural free delivery came on January 16, 1911, and owned and operated the store until his death in August 1911. The store was sold, but continued in profitable operation until 1931, when it was closed because of the lack of police protection. With the convenience of the post office, the store, and the trains, Murphy became quite a center of activity. From its conception, the store was kept open several nights a week. Buena Vista Grange No. 544, organized August 24, 1872, in John's new barn, rented the store's second-story hall for its meetings before its acquired its own hall in 1909-1910. The Murphy Silver Cornet Band held practices in John's barn, later in the hall over the store; operated until the late 1940's. In the 1920's the Murphy ball team was organized and played in a Jasper County League; its home games were played on a diamond laid out at Murphy. The store building was torn down in 1937. Long after the store was gone the trains went by carrying freight, but the mid thirties brought changing patterns in the sale and shipment of grain and livestock, and the stockyards were closed. By 1950 the route had been abandoned. Now nothing remains of Murphy but the records and the land along with memories. Principal source: Diaries of John W. Murphy and submitted by Velma Murphy Adamson.
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