McLaughlin Family

David Murphy is a problematic ancestor because of the apocryphal stories that surround him. The question is whether David married Hannah Jones in Southern Illinois and migrated to Minnesota or whether he came from Ireland through Canada to Minnesota.

The family lore around his migration from southern Illinois says that his wife was a quarter or half Cherokee. According to this line of reasoning, he came from Ohio, met her, married her, and set up a homestead where Catherine was born. He moved north in 1838 to avoid being forced unto Cherokee land in Oklahoma. The story works if we assume that her first name is Hannah.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota Territorial and State Census of 1885 found David with his wife Honora in Anoka, Minnesota. Honora is a typical given name for Catholic women in Ireland at this period of time, whereas it is rarely used in America during the same time period. No immigration record surfaces during extensive searches on Ancestry.com, which unfortunately may point back to the theory they moved from Southern Illinois. The documents say Ireland, so those are the best source at present and what’s reflected in genealogical records.

There is only one known photo taken in the 1890s. My grandmother identified the two in the photo as Honora and David Murphy. The photo was important to her father John A. Atckison because his maternal grandmother couldn’t swim. She had been talked into it, even though she was terrified of the water because she couldn’t swim. The water was only a couple feet deep where she took the photo. It appears to me that her skin color is more Irish looking than Indian looking, but perhaps it’ll need to wait for the millennium for resolution.