Background
John Murphy was born on March 12, 1812, in Omagh, Tyrone, Ireland, the son of Bernard Murphy and Mary McCullough. He was brought by his parents to New Castle, Delaware, in 1822.
John Murphy was born on March 12, 1812, in Omagh, Tyrone, Ireland, the son of Bernard Murphy and Mary McCullough. He was brought by his parents to New Castle, Delaware, in 1822.
Murphy attended the New Castle Academy and worked in a store until he was sixteen years of age, when he went to Philadelphia to learn the printing trade.
Becoming a skilled craftsman, with an artistic touch, and possessing business acumen, he was soon superintendent of a thriving concern.
About 1835 he established a printing and stationery house in Baltimore, where the trade was less crowded, and two years later he added the publication of books. As a publishing house of high standards and laudable ideals, Murphy & Company did a substantial general business, although its specialty was Catholic books. Catholic writers, some of whom became prelates, owed Murphy a debt of gratitude, for he courageously undertook ponderous theological works for which there was a restricted market, and assumed losses which were met by the profits from commercial printing and the sale of textbooks. Furthermore, he was available when secular publishing houses practically refused manuscripts by Catholic writers. He also brought out Bibles, hymnals, prayerbooks in various languages, and devotional guides, putting them on the market at a commendably low price; through translations issued by him foreign Catholic writings were made known to the American public. He printed The Religious Cabinet, the first number of which appeared in January 1842.
In 1843, Murphy became proprietor of the periodical, and the name of it was changed to the United States Catholic Magazine, under which title he published it until December 1848. He also published The Metropolitan; A Monthly Magazine (1853 - 1859), a monthly devoted to religion, education, literature, and general information; the Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's Directory; the Catholic Youth's Magazine (1857 - 1861); The Works of the Right Reverend John England (5 vols. , 1849); theological writings of the Kenricks and the Spaldings; Peter Fredet's popular histories, Gibbons' Faith of Our Fathers, which proved a best seller; and numerous works of lesser clergymen.
The foreign books brought out by him included Butler's Lives of the Saints, Faber's writings, Thomas Moore's Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion, Rituale Romanum Pauli V, John Lingard's Abridgment of the History of England, J. M. V. Audin's Life of Luther, Cardinal Wiseman's works, Hendrik Conscience's Belgian novels, Châteaubriand's Genius of Christianity, and Balmes's Protestantism and Catholicity Compared.
Among his secular publications were James McSherry's History of Maryland (1850), the new constitution of Maryland of 1851 and also those of 1864 and 1867, and The Maryland Code, Public General Laws (2 vols. , 1860), with later supplements, which won the encomium of his friend, Chief Justice Taney.
A man of integrity, he lived quietly through the trying Civil War years and paid off all liabilities when many businessmen took refuge in bankruptcy. On his sudden death on May 27, 1880, from paralysis, he was buried from the cathedral in Baltimore, attended by an unusual concourse of friends of various ranks.
John Murphy was an early member of the Maryland Historical Society.
On June 15, 1852, John Murphy married Margaret E. O'Donnoghue, who died in 1869, leaving two sons and four daughters.