"JAMES MURRAY at Taylor's Mount Baltimore County Md., on Friday afternoon, June 4 (ca 1885)... after a brief illness of pneumonia James Murray, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, in the 58th year of his age."
"Mr. Murray came to this country thirty three-years ago, and since then resided on Joppa Farm, the historic site of old Baltimore. For many years he was vestryman, registrar, and treasurer of St John's Parish, and one of its most liberal supporters."
United States Census,
1870
Maryland, United States [Upper Falls, Harford County]
Household Gender Age Birthplace
James Murray M 42y Scotland
James Carr M 50y Maryland
Julia Carr F 48y Maryland
Sylvester Jones M 20y Maryland
James Hickey M 40y Maryland
According to the
History Of Baltimore City And County....:
What was once the site of Joppa is now the farm of James Murray, a native of Scotland and a descendant of the clan MacGregor. In his orchard are the cellars and foundations of the ancient courthouse, St. John's church, the jails, taverns, and stores. A few yards away is the spot where stood the gallows-tree, the whipping-post, and the stocks. Along the shores of the Gunpowder are seen to this day huge piles of stone, all that remain of the substructures of the wharves and warehouses of the olden time.
W. Y. Day and John Beall Rumsey, whose ancestors were among the merchant princes of Joppa when it was in the height of its glory, are present residents of the neighborhood.
Our Predecessors And Their Decendants, by Robert Ludlow Fowler, has more of the Murray story:
Colonel Charles Rumsey had one brother, Benjamin Rumsey, who was a judge in Maryland and, prior to the Revolution, a member of the colonial bar. This gentleman lived at Joppa, on an arm of the Chesapeake, formerly a town more important than Baltimore, but all the houses of this once prosperous place, excepting the ancient and fine one occupied by Judge Rumsey himself, have been removed by his descendants, and the titles to the town lots merged in the same proprietor, John Beal Rumsey, Esq., of Baltimore County. "Joppa" was afterwards
sold by this gentleman to a Scotchman named Murray, a son of an Edinburgh lawyer, whose family in Scotland became, in consequence, acquaintances of the writer and his family. The last Scotch inheritor of this place, Mr. James Murray, on his death, considerately left "Joppa" again to his friend, a descendant of the Rumsey family, and our mother's cousin german. The interesting features of " Joppa " are contained in a study published in the Johns Hopkins University Studies. The writer has passed many a pleasant day at this old place so full of associations of colonial Maryland.
