Matthew J. Murphy was born February 17; 1854 in Boston, MA the son of Jerome and Mary Nolan Murphy. The Murphys moved to Rodney, Wisconsin where Matt received his education. In 1880 he moved to Dakota Territory, first working as manager for the Peter Dickson holdings and later taking a homestead claim south of Eckelson in Mansfield township near the George Gordons, Fred Tabberts, Robert Menke and Andrew Hinschberger farms.
Being a bachelor in his late twenties he often had one of his sisters come from Wisconsin to visit. One sister, Theresa Murphy, taught the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, terms in the first school in the township. Although speculators had built a schoolhouse, it was several years before the district could come to terms on the price so the school stood idle and she taught 10 students in the Kee home, using the living room as a schoolroom.
In 1890 another sister, Agnes, aged 24, spent 8 months with him and although a prosperous young farmer, Harry W. Green (reputed to become one of the first millionaires in North Dakota) proposed marriage many times Agnes decided the pioneer life was not for her. She returned to her home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and although she lived to be 84 she never married. Matt Murphy continued to prosper, purchasing several additional acres of land and spent quite some time traveling. He went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, thru Yellowstone Park in 1902, plus a trip to Mexico before 1914.
In about 1908 he built a home comparable to his family home in Wisconsin but a mansion on the prairies. It was a wooden two story, 5 bedroom home with a finished attic and a basement. There were two cisterns with a pressure pump in the basement to furnish water for the complete bathroom upstairs and the two sinks on the main floor. He installed a furnace with hot air registers to every room plus hardwood floors throughout the house. Although there was no electricity available he did buy the poles and wire so that the telephone company could install the first telephone that far south of Eckelson. He also planted many trees and built several additional buildings, including a garage for the Reo Touring car that he purchased in 1912, one of the first in the county.
In the summer of 1912 his niece, Margaret Heaney, having just graduated from Stevens Point Teachers college in Wisconsin, came to visit her Uncle Matt. After meeting Joe Hinschberger at a local barn dance she decided to remain in North Dakota and accepted a teaching position. She was to teach several children who later became her nieces and nephews when she married Joseph Hinschberger in June of 1915.
Matt Murphy rented his farm to the young Hinschberger couple and continued to make his home with them between his travels, as he spent several winters at the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, California.
Matthew Murphy died November 11, 1918 of the flu at his farm home. He was very active in the Catholic Church, was a Fourth Degree Member of the Knights of Columbus and several other lodges. He was buried in the Murphy family plot in Berlin, Wisconsin.
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 165