01395 William Carroll Hill, "Memoirs of Deceased Members of the New England Historic Genealogical

Society," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 97[1943].

[page 384]

WALTER PATTON MURPHY, of Lake Forest, Ill., manufacturer of railway equipment, inventor, and
philanthropist who was a strong believer in promoting industry through education, elected an annual member 14
October 1933 and transferred to life membership on 28 November 1934, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., 26 January
1873, son of Peter Henry and Jane Elizabeth (PATTON) MURPHY, and died in Los Angeles, Cal., 16 December
1942.
Mr. MURPHY was the grandson of an Irish immigrant who came to Vermont in the early 1840=s and
was killed in a railroad accident. His son, Peter Henry2 MURPHY, was 11 years old when he lost his father. He
started work on railroads as a water boy, then became a fireman, locomotive engineer and finally master mechanic.
he sent his family, including young Walter3 Patton, to a farm in Kansas late in 1880. Walter came back to East St.
Louis, Mo., a few years later to work in a machine shop. he became a fireman on a short line railroad out of St.
Louis to Cairo, and in the meantime studied at St. Louis University. He was placed in charge of railroad shops at
Coffeyville, Ky., and later had charge of the St. Louis shops.
Peter H.2 established shops for building freight box cars with improved roofs and ends, under some 40
patents, in East St. Louis and his son joined him in the business in 1898. The business grew and prospered and,
when Peter died in 1919, Walter

[page 385]

P.3 became head of the firm, the Standard Railway Mfg. Equipment Co., and he amassed a great fortune in its
management.
He was a strong believer in education for the working man and fostered research in science and training
of men to apply the fruits of their study to everyday living. In 1939 he gave $6,735,000 to Northwestern University
to found Technological Institute, on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon his death he left
the same Institute the residue of his estate, amounting to some $20,000,000. He had also given $100,000 to Trinity
College in Hartford, Conn., and was also liberal in his gifts to many other institutions and causes. He was fond of
yachting and in 1930 built a barkentine square rigger at a cost of $1,000,000, which, in 1940, he sold to the
government for $1.
He was given the honorary degree of M.A. by Trinity College; was organizer of the Walter P. MURPHY
Foundation (charitable corporation); was vice president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; Fellow
of the Royal Society of London; member of the Metropolitan Club of Washington; New York Yacht Club; Chicago
Club; Pacific Union Club of San Francisco and American Royal Thames Club of London. He never married.

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