Murray Photograph and Some Historical Background on Boston

JPG's of this heliograph (i.e., photograph) and its cover were recently sent to me by a gentleman who purchased it in an antiques mall in Illinois. Adam Reaves identified this picture as one of  Rev. WHH Murray.

Here is a little information I have found concerning the photographer Boynton & Co. who took the Murray photograph (uh, excuse me, heliographic artist. Photographer and HA were used interchangeably in those days.)

According to the census information I have found for Boston, Boynton & Co. did not exist in 1865. The photographer George H. Boynton listed himself as a clerk in 1865 and did not live or work at 313 Washington Street then. By 1870 Boynton & Co. had become Boynton and Heald on Washington Street. Mr. Sumner B. Heald was the new partner. The Boyntons were a large family living or working in several of the homes on Washington Street then. 

In 1872 there was a great fire in Boston that consumed roughly 65 acres of the downtown including the building at 313 Washington St. From what I gather, Boynton and Heald went out of business and the building was never rebuilt. Neither man continued in photography that I could find. Notably, Rev. Murray's Church at the time of the Great Boston Fire was the Park Street Congregational Church. The church escaped the fire by a mere two blocks. Boynton & Co. could probably been seen from the front steps of the church as it was consumed on the western perimeter of the fire.

All that being said, I would say that the photo was taken somewhere between 1868 and 1872.

According to at least one writer for NPR, Murray was reported in the press of his day to be almost single-handedly responsible for redefining the word "vacation" to apply to middle-class Americans. Actually the railroads were looking for a way to get people to travel and make use of their trains. They latched on to Murray and his book to get folks to vacate the house and travel when they had time off work. Until Murray the middle class still called time off a "holiday". Vacations were for the courts, congress, and universities which were vacated during summer recess.

Murray's book created a mass exodus to the mountains and wilderness areas of America. And the railroads benefited greatly from this new era of summer travel and camping.

Other links

You can view posters advertizing lectures Murray gave on the Adirondacks at the New York State Department of Education (http://nysed.gov/).

You can find Murray's obituary online at the New York Times.

The Wikipedia article on WHH Murray has a good photo of Murray taken while he was minister at the Park Street Cong. Church in Boston. There is also an interesting link at the bottom of the same Wikipedia article to photos of Murray's grave in a little family cemetary on his family farm. Included there is a list of all his family members buried in that cemetary.

The Star article has an interesting photo of Murray as an Adirondack frontiersman. He is shown with a bushy beard and hair and holding a rifle.

WHH Murray timeline

Born - William Henry Harrison Murray on April 26, 1840 in Guilford, Ct to Dickenson and Sally Murray

Entered Yale - 1858

Yale graduate - 1862

Married Isadora Hull of East River, CT - 1862 (just a few weeks after graduating Yale)

Attended East Windsor Theological Seminary (Hartford Theological Inst.)

Licenced minister - 1863

Pastor @ First Congregational Church, Washington, CT from 1863-1864

Associate minister to Edward Hatfield, D.D., N.Y.C. - 1864

Pastor @ Second Cong. Church, Greenwich, CT - 1864- 1866

Took camping vacations in Adirondacks - 1864- 1877

Pastor at Cong. Church, Meriden, CT - 1866-1868

Pastor at Park Street Cong. Church, Boston - Fall, 1868-1874

Published Adventures in the Wilderness - April 1, 1869

Bought family homestead @ Guilford - 1870

Bought two farms adjoining his homestead, converted farms to horse breeding - 1872

Published The Perfect Horse - 1873

Pastor at New England Church, Boston (his independent church at Boston Music Hall) - 1875-1878

Separated from wife Isadora - 1878

Divorced Isadora (desertion) - 1886

Married Frances M. Rivers of Montreal, Canada - 1886

Died - March 3, 1904 in the very same room where he was born

Murray - Popular Congregational Minister

William Murray was a wildly successful young preacher at one of New England's largest and most influential Congregational churches, Park Street Church, Boston, a.k.a. Brimstone Corner for its part in the Revolutionary War. This dynamic, charismatic, and energetic speaker and lecturer changed the face of Boston in the 1870s. Murray was such a powerful preacher that many newspapers across the country printed his sermons each week. William was probably the 1870s equivalent of today's televangelists. And he was one of only a handful of such popular, charismatic speakers of his day - Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Sumner, Gough, and Brooks to name a few. Murray also lectured and preached frequently at Boston Music Hall. Many of his sermons were also published in book form. William even found time to edit and contribute to "The Golden Rule," a weekly publication of spiritual, moral, and general interest articles.

Murray - Adirondack Wilderness Writer and Outdoorsman

William Murray was a tall, powerful man with a keen interest in hunting, fishing, and backpacking. In the mid-1800's hiking was called "tramping" and backpacks were wicker baskets strapped to one's back. While attending college at Yale, Murray made at least two friends who would deeply influence his life, O.H. Platt and Joseph Cook. Plat was a fellow Connecticut native who discovered the wonders of hunting and bivouacking in the Adirondack wilderness. Cook was a New York native whose family's Morgan horse farm lay on the edge of the Adirondacks on Lake Champlain. Cook's father would eventually sell several of his best Morgans to Murray for his own farm.

From 1864 to 1877, Murray made annual trips to the Adirondacks, especially with Platt, but also with his first wife Isadora Hull, and also with many friends and lovers of Adventures. Murray loved to stay on Osprey Island on Racquette Lake. The island became know as Murray's Island for many years.

In the spring of 1869, William published his first book, Adventures in the wilderness; or, Camp-life in the Adirondacks, which became an instant best-seller. Murray became an overnight success as an author, opened the Adirondack wilderness to the American public, and made wilderness camping and backpacking into recreations for the common person - man, woman, or child. The book's popularity created a "rush' of hundreds of new visitors to the Adirondack region that summer in search of rest, relaxation, recreation, sport, and even healing for ailments such as consumption (tuberculosis). This "rush" overtaxed the region's resources of both manpower and materials for several years. (Coincidentally, Adventures was first released on or about April Fools' Day, 1869 hence the reference to Murray's Fools.) Adventures in the Wilderness is credited with much of the growth in tourism in the Adirondacks for the next four decades.

WHH Murray - Author

Published works of WHH Murray:
1. Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-life in the Adirondacks (1869)
2. The Perfect Horse
3. Adirondack Tales (including "The Story the Keg Told Me" and "The Man Who Didn't Know Much")
4. Holiday Tales (including "How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas" and "John Norton's Vagabond")
5. The Old Trapper's Thanksgiving
6. The Busted Ex-Texan; or, the Story of the Man Who Missed It
7. Mamelons
8. Ungava
9. Daylight Land
10. How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's, and Other Stories
11. Lake Champlain and Its Shores
12. Deacons
13. The Old Apple Tree's Easter
14. How I Am Educating My Daughters

15. Park Street pulpit : sermons preached by William H. H. Murray ...

http://archive.org › eBook and Texts › Princeton Theological Seminary‎

*also numerous collections of sermons, lectures, addresses and humorous sketches.

This list is from Adirondack Murray by Harry V. Radford.

William Murray - Husband and Father

Shortly after graduating from Yale in 1862, William married Isadora Hull of East River, CT. She was a lover of the outdoors, like her new husband. She worked as a teacher while William attended East Windsor Theological Seminary and also during his vicarage in New York City.
The couple prospered on William's $3000 annual salary and living in comfortable parsonage at the Meriden church. The couple's lifestyle improved even more at Park Street with a good salary and income from William's books, newspaper articles, and his own weekly newspaper The Golden Rule.
William bought his family farm and converted it into a stable for breeding race horses. At roughly the same time, he invested heavily in a carriage business that quickly failed. The members and leaders at Park Street strongly disapproved of Will's lifestyle and time spent away from church business. During this time, the couple discovered that Isadora could not have children, which bothered Will greatly.
William's departure from Park Street and the establishment of his independent church further eroded the couple's relationship. Isadora discovered interests of her own, most prominently an interest in medicine. Will's business ventures all failed and he lost the family farm and the bulk of their savings in the process. Following the collapse of the independent church in 1879, Will resigned the ministry the couple separated. Isadora went to New York then Vienna to study medicine, specifically surgery. She became the first American to be a licenced surgeon in Europe. Will began traveling around the states, England, and Europe, giving lectures on camping and the Adirondacks. The couple officially divorced in 1886.
William tried ranching in Texas for a time, then performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Montreal for a while. He finally settled into running a small restaurant in Montreal that specialized in oysters. During this time in Montreal, Will met Frances Rivers, and the couple were married in 1886. The couple eventually moved to Burlington, Vermont where Will was director of a yacht club for a while. He also wrote a book on Lake Champlain and began lecturing again on the benefits of camping and the wilderness life. Will also performed readings from his Adirondack Tales.
Around 1890 the Murray's were able to purchase the Murray homestead once again. Here the loving couple raised four daughters - Maud, Ruby, Grace, and Ethel. At least one book, How I Am Educating My Daughters, resulted from Murray's work with his girls.
Murray's health began to fail in 1900. On March 3, 1904, just a few weeks shy of his 64th birthday, William Murray passed away quietly in the same bedroom where he was born. He was buried in a small family cemetery on the farm property not far from the house.