One of the earliest and best known pioneers of Platte county was "Pat Murray," as he is familiarly called. He was a native of King's county, Ireland, where his birth occurred, if we can believe the inscription on the tombstone, in (August), 1825. P. Murray had at least three sisters, who all came to America. Pat had imigrated thither, when he was eighteen years of age and worked as a farm hand near Peola, Chester county, Pennsylvania. According to old histories Pat Murray and Hugh McDonough walked all the way from Pennsylvania to Nebraska and even to Columbus on foot. According to D. Anderson, another pioneer, who knew Murray in Pennsylvania, Pat's first stock in trade in Platte County, Nebraska, was a blind horse and a sum of forty dollars.

Patrick and his comrade, H. McDonough, arrived in Platte county in spring, 1857, and homesteaded about three miles northwest of Columbus (near Shady Lake). Pat built a sod house across the road from the later residence and when the nest was prepared, he hastened to Council Bluffs, to bring home his partner for life, his beloved Bridget Hennessey. Soon after Pat put up a log house and when this burned down, he erected the frame house still standing beside the windmill and famous old barn. The latter was built of cotton wood lumber, for which Mr. Murray paid $70 per thousand and which he hauled with ox teams from Omaha. The posts were round, the rafters hand-hewn and there was net a nail in the building. Wooden pegs were driven into the dove-tailed parts into which holes had been drilled. He built his barn, which was a hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide, "before he proved up on his homestead", according to the year chiseled into a rafter in the hayloft in 1861. Patrick needed large barns, feeding as he did, four to five car loads of cattle for the market and making and selling hay to Uncle Sam for the cavalry horses. Accordingly he frequently employed and boarded 30 to 35 persons.



Though Mr. Murray could not even write his own name, except in one continuous scroll, which he had to re-trace entirely, if disturbed therein; he was an excellent financier and employed any honest means to earn a penny. He sought to acquire as much land as possible, engaged in stock raising, feeding, hay-making, freighting, agriculture and trading with the Indians, etc. At the first sale of railroad land Mr. Murray made, at an Omaha bank, a loan sufficient to make the initial payment and purchased a tract costing $4,000. With two teams he broke 100 acres of land in four weeks and sowed it to wheat. The next year he harvested a splendid crop and sold nearly 1,600 bushels at Omaha, whither he hauled it with his ox teams at $1.02 per bushel. The second year he broke the remaining sixty acres and threshed 1,400 bushels the second season. in about four years the land had paid for itself. Some of this buckwheat he hauled one hundred and six miles to have it ground to flour.



Mrs. B. Murray who had been severely shocked by the wounds received at the Lost Creek Massacre, lived nevertheless till February 3. 1892. His first union had remained without an offspring. Hence Mr. Murray, though about 56 years old, married again on July 3, 1892 or, as others have it, on July 4th--this time to Miss F. Schultz, formerly of Humphrey. This marriage was blessed with seven children.



He passed away on July 26, 1906, of the effects of old age and pneumonia. Interment was in the Murray family lot in St. Bonaventure's Cemetery, whither the remains of his first wife, interred at first in Father Ryan's Cemetery near the homestead, had later been brought. Patrick Murray was a typical old sturdy Irish pioneer, without schooling, rough but astute. When the 1901 hospital addition was completed, Mr. Murray came to inspect the building and left a $100 donation on the table. Many orphans found with him a good home.
The old Irish pioneers were always spoiling for a fight, Mr. Murray was no exception. When, on one occasion, Pat was challenged by a man, who thought he had some grievance against him, he refused to fight in Columbus, but invited him to come along to a pasture to fight it out. When they arrived at the place designated, the opponent, eager for an immediate fisticuff engagement, jumped from the wagon and pulled off his coat, to begin at once, while Pat immediately whipped up his team, leaving the disappointed opponent, the laughing-stock of their friends. Pat is also said to have hauled, gratis, the cottonwood lumber for (the second) St. John's Church at Columbus,* by ox teams from Omaha. May he rest in peace.

*According to pioneers and Platte County History, the first St. John's was a log church.


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