James I. MURRAY - History

MURRAY, STUART, CARTER, DETAR, LYON, LEFFLER

Posted By: Joey Stark - Jefferson Co. Volunteer
Date: 4/26/2006 at 13:26:52

"Iowa Historical Record", published by the State Historical Society, at Iowa City, Iowa: 1899. Volumes XIII, XIV, and XV, 1897-98-99.

"Jefferson County Pioneers" (Continued from April, 1899), by H. Heaton, Glendale, Iowa; pages 500-511

"James I MURRAY.... of the first state constitutional convention from Jefferson County, was born in Pennsylvania, and at the time of the convention was just forty years old. When a young man he went to Virginia and learned the stone mason's trade and married. His father was a colonel in the Revolutionary War. James was one of a large family -- at a time when large families were the rule.

In 1837 MURRAY came to Iowa with his family of three daughters and two sons, in company with his brother-in-law, John C. STUART. They built a flat boat and on it with their families, and a few household goods, bade farewell to "Old Virginia", at a point in Braxton County, on Elk River, guiding their boat down that river to the Kanawha, and down that stream to the Ohio, where they sold their flat boat and took passage on a steamboat down that river and up the Mississippi, landing in the spring of 1837 at Fort Madison.

Both STUART and MURRAY settled five miles northeast of Fairfield, the latter buying a claim from a man named Joseph CARTER, who had built a cabin of round oak logs, near a spring of sulphurous water; the cabin had been built without a nail, or iron of any description, the door was made of clapboards, fastened weather boarding fashion, on a rough frame with wooden pins; without a window, with the earth for a floor, chimney of mud and sticks, a typical cabin of the first settlers. It will be seen that it was next to impossible to sweep the floor clean of dust.

During the summer of 1837 Mr. MURRAY built a hewn log house which with some repairing done to it, served as a dwelling until 1898, sixty-two years. Mr. MURRAY entered four hundred and thirty-six acres of land for himself, when the land came into market, besides a number of tracts of land which he entered and held for neighbors, until they could obtain the money to pay for their homes. One of these men who owed the possession of his claim to MURRAY's helping hand, was William DeTAR, now a wealthy farmer of Monroe County.

Mr. MURRAY was all his life interested in the education of the children. He donated land and material for the first school house near what has since been Perlee, and when in a few years it was burned, he gave the logs with which another was built; besides he gave all the fuel for school purposes for ten years of more. Mr. MURRAY helped to build the stone work of Deeds Mill, now known as Merrimac. Mr. MURRAY was not an educated man but had a good understanding, which a common school education had made more effective than the minds of many of the so-called educated people become. He was a lover of the poet Burns, and had a good library, for those early days.

MURRAY enjoyed the debating societies of those days, going so far as to open his house for their meetings, making seats for the people by carrying in fence rails. At one of these debates he and Frederick LYON, a notable pioneer, combated all opponents in discussing the evils of Mormonism.

MURRAY was a large man weighing 280 pounds; he was a Free Mason, and his progressive character had recommended him as a proper representative in forming a state constitution.

In 1844 there was not a mile of railway in Iowa, neither was there any public conveyance from Fairfield to Iowa City, and so the five Jefferson county members arranged to go by their own conveyance, which was a light wagon. When the wagon reached MURRAY's, his cabin being on the direct road from Fairfield to Iowa City, Mrs. MURRAY was putting out the week's washing, at the spring some distance from the house, and when the four men went into the house she said to one of the children with her, Wm. B., now of Fairfield, "they have gone in to get a drink of grog", so common was it to offer spirits to a caller at that day when it was desired to show respect.

The convention met October 7th, and chose Shepherd LEFFLER of Burlington, President. There were seventy-two members and they concluded their labors on November 1, 1844. Mr. MURRAY's opinion of the convention was that it was very different from a debating society in a log school house...."

[Also posted to the Des Moines and Jefferson Counties' Documents boards]

*Transcribed for genealogy purposes; I have no relation to the person(s).