Background
More recent sources indicate he was born in Bibb County and was the illegitimate son of Peggy Murrah, a daughter of Charles and Avarilla Jones Murrah.
More recent sources indicate he was born in Bibb County and was the illegitimate son of Peggy Murrah, a daughter of Charles and Avarilla Jones Murrah.
He was raised and educated in a Baptist orphanage, and graduated from Brown University in 1848. He then studied law and was admitted to the Barometer
His term in office coincided with the American Civil War. According to his 1850 and 1860 entries in the United States. Census, Murrah was a native of Alabama. He moved to Texas and opened a law practice in Marshall.
In 1861 he declined to run for a seat in the Confederate Congress because of ill health, probably tuberculosis, but his health recovered sufficiently enough that he accepted a commission in the 14th Texas Infantry, a Confederate Army unit commanded by former governor Edward Clark.
As governor during the American Civil War, Murrah emphatically supported the Confederate cause, although he ended up in a controversy over the conscription of Texas militia troops into the Confederate Army. Still, even after Robert East. Lee surrendered in 1865, he encouraged Texans to continue the revolution.
When he learned that Union Army forces were en route to Texas, Murrah fled to Mexico with other Confederate leaders. Lieutenant Governor Fletcher Summerfield Stockdale filled the vacant post, acting as governor for three months, until provisional governor Andrew J. Hamilton assumed office in August 1865.
The trip to Mexico took a toll on Murrah"s health, and he died in Monterrey on August 4, 1865.
His grave is located in the Panteon Municipal of Monterrey, Mexico. Charles Murrah, the grandfather of Pendleton Murrah, was born in 1775 in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1850 Murrah married Sue Ellen Taylor, daughter of a prominent Texas plantation owner.
According to the 1860 census, they had no children.