Biography |
Thomas Murray Murdock, second son of Robert A. Murdock, was born in Chillisquaque township in 1803. He was a contractor and builder. In 1834 he was married to Eleanor Wilson, daughter of Nathaniel Wilson, Jr. (1779-1826), who lived near where Pottsgrove now is, and who for many years was a justice of the peace and paymaster in the militia (48th Regiment), and whose father, Nathaniel Wilson, Sr., was born in 1747 and died in Chillisquaque in 1807. Nathaniel Wilson, Sr., was married to Eleanor McAllister in 1774. He was one of the original subscribers to the Chillisquaque Presbyterian Church. Nathaniel Wilson, Jr. was married to Sarah Bond (1781-1832), a daughter of Samuel Bond (1754-1838) who emigrated to Chillisquaque in 1790 from Maryland, and who afterward became prominent in Northumberland county politics, being commissioned justice of the peace in 1797, and serving as county commissioner from 1806 to 1809, and as member of the State Legislature from 1811 to 1813, and again representing Columbia county in the Legislature from 1816 to 1818. Samuel Bond was a grandson of Sir Richard Bond, of England.
Thomas M. Murdock was politically a Democrat. In 1847 he rebuilt the Susquehanna river bridge, which had been swept away by a flood. His wife, Eleanor Wilson Murdock, died in 1872. They were the parents of six children: Sarah, wife of the late C.W. Tharp, Esq.; Robert Hammond, who is still living, and who for many years was the agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Corry, Pa.; Jane, wife of Williamson Marsh, deceased; Nathaniel Wilson, who died in 1860, in his eighteenth year; Thomas A.; and Elizabeth Ellen, who married George Barclay, of Milton.
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