Murphy,
Texas
Compiled
by David Boyd
In
August of 2003, the new
Murphy
Middle School
opened for classes. Murphy,
Texas
has a long history of
settlement and education. This
vignette was written in honor of the opening of the school for presentation to
Bonnie Manley, its first principal.
Murphy,
Texas
had several names during
early settlement. Among these are
Rowlett and Muddy Creek but McMillan called the town that sprang up closeby
“Old Decatur” in honor of his hometown.
“
Decatur
had a gin, a church and a
school, three physicians, and the general store,” one historian has observed (Zavitz).
Martin
W. Gentry was a teacher in Old Decatur, Texas.
He was possibly the son of a Baptist Minister who had been involved in a
dispute in the “four corners incident” where the counties of Collin,
Grayson, Fannin and Hunt join. The
dispute is reportedly to have been concerning Union sympathies versus the
followers of a local Confederate officer, and resulted in the death of a
participant.
Decatur
’s Gentry arrived at the
time of the disturbance and he remained in the area for the rest of his life.
In 1868
this area was referred to as the
Decatur Road
district, by the
Collin County Commissioners
Court
(2:101) and it was 64 square
miles in area; that is, eight miles long by eight miles wide.
“It ran eight miles east from Rowlett creek and eight miles north of
the
Dallas
county line.”
Families
in their own neighborhoods operated early schools in the area.
In about 1880
Collin
County
started providing money to
provide schooling for the whole county. In
that year, the sum of $18,000 had been set aside for the school fund, and it
provided financing for a hundred schools in the county.
Among those mentioned is
Decatur
School
, under the instruction of A.
J. Berryman “a young man of good attainment holding a first grade certificate
is giving general satisfaction. Fund
$134.23.” Historical Edition
McKinney
Advocate
April 3, 1880
.
The name
changed from
Decatur
to Maxwell Branch to avoid
confusion with
Decatur
,
Texas
, being the county seat of Wise.
Ben P. McPherson was the first postmaster of Maxwell Branch, which was
alternatively called
Maxwell
School
.
McPherson was a settler who came from
Kentucky
.
It was the home of his daughter, Mrs. D. C. George, which was taken to
Old
City
Park
in
Dallas
and is preserved to this
day.
In 1888,
the St. Louis and Southwestern Railroad built its right of way through William
Murphy’s land and the town got its third name, Murphy, Texas.
Born in
Ashville
,
North Carolina
on
May 27, 1818
, William Andrew Murphy
married Dorothy Hudeberg in
North Carolina
. They left their home and
moved to
Indiana
near
Chicago
and moved again to
Texas
in 1849 accompanied by his
brother Eli Murphy and an early Peters Colony Settler, William McCreary.
The
Murphys had five daughters, Susan, Mary, Ann, Kate or Dorothy and five sons,
James B. (T?), William J., Franklin Pierce, Pleasant W. and John H.
William
Murphy’s daughter, Susan, married James Lilburn Moulden in 1866.
He was later to be Collin County Sheriff from 1893 to 1897.
William
Murphy founded the
Moulden
Cemetery
in 1872.
The local cemetery at Old Decatur was full and Murphy had to bury his
sister, Susan Murphy Emerton on his own land.
On
January 30, 1891
, Murphy got its first post
office, which was headed by William Murphy’s son, James Murphy, postmaster.
The post office remained in town until February 1954 when local mail
delivery service was moved to
Plano
,
Texas
.
Murphy’s
descendents still live in the area and the town continues to bear the family
name.
Hall, Capt. Roy F. and Helen Gibbard Hall, Collin County Pioneering
in North Texas, Quannah, Texas, 1975.
Plano
Texas: The Early Years, Friends of the Plano Public
Library, Henington Publishing Company, Wolfe City, Texas, 1985.
Stambaugh
& Stambaugh, A History of
Collin
County
Texas
,
Texas
State Historical
Association, 1958.
Chandler
, Elaine Young Ancestry.com
Zavitz,
Bev, Living in Murphy,
Texas
,
Plano
,
Texas
1984
Zavitz,
Bev, Living in Murphy,
Texas
, Photographic Folio,
Dallas
Public Library