10/25/2024
After that amazing day at the James Murray house yesterday, how could we top that? Well, we couldn’t. We knew that was not possible, but we could start to look more into James Murray. Sooooo, we headed down to the Rush County Courthouse.
I had been here before with my other brother, Don, and had some idea of where to go. We headed into the newspaper section of the courthouse first. It’s shocking to see that we have unfettered access to newspapers of the 1800s – no gloves, no restrictions, no checking things out, no microfiche, nothing. Back in 2016, Don and I had pulled off the weekly newspaper for the week James Murray’s death, and we discovered he had gone south to buy cotton and contracted typhoid fever. Well, when Craig and I were looking through the newspaper, we could not find this reference at all. Crazy. How could that be?
What we did find in the newspaper was an obituary for James Murray. So cool. Something new! With a bit of time and digging, we did actually find the previous discovery about James. There were two different newspapers in that room that had two different presentations of James Murray’s death.
The next room we entered was the place where they held land records. It’s possible we missed some, but we gathered a LOT of records where Arnold Murray (Anthony’s son and James’ father) bought and sold land in Rush, Indiana, and a lot of records where James Murray purchased land here. We also captured records of the sale of James’ land by his wife, Evaline Murray after James had passed in 1863 (at the age of 36). What I will do with this information is try to develop a chronology of the Murrays in Indiana so that we have a story of at least a part of their lives.
After filling our heads with land record books, when we wrapped up in the county courthouse, we decided to get outdoors and visit a couple of cemeteries. How’s that for a break? Ha.
We first went to the cemetery where James and his wife, Evaline Murray are buried. I had been here before with Don and I remembered their graves were on a sort of hill. The records showed section 3, but for the life of me, I could not find their graves. Craig and I (and the pooches) walked around for quite a while until finally – yeah – I found them! James & Evaline Murray, a separate earlier grave marker for James, their 2-year old son Jasper, son Arnold Murray (our g grandfather), as well as several other family members. That was cool.
Then we went off to Flat Rock Cemetery to view Arnold and Sarah Murray’s graves. These are the parents of James Murray – and Arnold was the son of Anthony Murray. Those grave stones were easier to find as the cemetery was smaller and I had a very good idea of what these grave stones looked like.
Oh, I forgot to mention that between the courthouse and the cemetery, we visited a brewery in town to grab a bite to eat – a place suggested by Tina from the James Murray house. Yum.
Settled down at our campsite for the evening to a nice bottle of wine (California, of course) a light vegetable meal and some good conversation.
10/25/2024