OCR Text |
Show Released by Western Newspaper Union.) Son of St. Patrick WITH several thousand soldiers ol our army now camped on Irish soil, the observance of St Patrick's day may well have a spe-ial spe-ial significance for Americans this year. For their presence there during dur-ing this latest and greatest war for human liberty recalls the part which Irishmen played in another fight for freedom more than a century and a half ago the American Revolution. Among these was a "fighting Irishman" who has become almost as legendary a figure as St. Patrick himself. Timothy Murphy vjas his name and he has been so much a "hero of song and story" that it is difficult to know where fact leaves cff and fiction begins. At least, that was the case until there appeared recently re-cently the first full-length biography of this redoubtable frontiersman which dispels much of the myth that has accumulated around his name. The book is "Timothy Murphy, Hero of the American Revolution," written writ-ten by Dr. Michael J. O'Brien and published by the Eire Publishing company of New York. Murphy was born in Minisink, Hew Jersey, in 1751. When he was 16 years old he was indentured as an apprentice to a family named Van Campen and later moved with them to the historic Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania. His apprenticeship apprentice-ship ended about 1773 and he struck out for himself, becoming an axeman axe-man with a party of surveyors. "In this capacity he perfected himself in the use of rifle and became be-came thoroughly inured to the dangers dan-gers and hardships of pioneer life,'" ! - I 1 : s v 1 " 5 4 . Mori i ri l : " -, f ! Monument over Timothy Murphy's grave in Middleburgh, N. Y. writes Dr. O'Brien. "His experiences experi-ences on the frontier taught him, too, the wiles of the Indians, and he quickly learned that in order to make his way in the world there would be times when he would have to depend on his rifle and his wits. It was to this frontier background that he owed his success as a scout in after years. All of which explains why we find him in Northumberland Northumber-land county at the time the news reached that distant point of the fight at Lexington. When the call came for men to fight in the impending impend-ing struggle, Timothy Murphy at once responded." He enlisted in a company of "expert "ex-pert riflemen," commanded by Capt, John Lowdon, marched with them to join Washington at Cambridge Cam-bridge and on St. Patrick's day in 1776 entered Boston with the Continental Conti-nental forces when British General Howe evacuated the city. Thereafter There-after Tim Murphy was in the thick of the fighting with Washington's army at Long Island, at White Plains, at the great victory over the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas day, 1776, and at Princeton. In June, 1777, he was one of the "chosen "cho-sen marksmen" who made up the "Partizan Corps" commanded by Gen. Daniel Morgan and marched to repel Burgoyne's invasion. So it was that Tim Murphy fought at Saratoga and there won immortality immor-tality by shooting General Fraser a "turning point" in the battle that was the "turning point of the Revolution." Revo-lution." Important as was this feat, however, it was not so remarkable, according to Dr O'Brien, as some of Murphy's exploits while he was serving as a scout with the army of General Sullivan, which smashed the power of the Iroquois in 1779, and during the bitter civil warwaged by the Tories and Indians against 1 the Patriots in the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys from 1778 to the end of the Revolution. Some of his daring deeds and hairbreadth escapes es-capes from death read more like those of a "Leatherstocking" character char-acter in fiction than those of a real historical figure. ( After the Revolution Murphy settled set-tled in the Schoharie valley where he became a large landowner and, although he never sought office himself, him-self, a power in politics in that region. His death on June 27, 1818, resulted from his rescue of two little boys caught in the waters of the Schoharie river Murphy was buried in the family plot of his wife's family but in 1872 his body was moved to the cemetery at Middleburgh on a hill overlooking the valley where he performed per-formed so many feats that made him one of the greatest Indian fight-. fight-. ers in history. |