Francis B. Murdoch

Francis Butter Murdoch (March 21, 1805 – May 10, 1882) was an American attorney and newspaper publisher. As a lawyer, he practiced law in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Missouri, and initiated freedom suits for Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott in 1846. Between 1840 and 1847, Murdoch filed nearly one-third of all freedom suits in St. Louis, and secured freedom for many of his clients who had been enslaved, including Polly Berry and her daughter, Lucy A. Delaney. Before that, Murdoch was the city attorney in Alton, Illinois, where he unsuccessfully prosecuted rioters who killed Elijah Parish Lovejoy, an anti-slavery newspaper publisher, in 1837.

After moving to California in 1852, Murdoch became a newspaper publisher and editor of the San Jose Telegraph, which later became The Mercury News, and founded the San Jose Patriot.

Early life and education Murdoch was born on March 21, 1805, in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland. He attended an academy in Bedford, Pennsylvania, at the age of 19. He read law under Judge Alexander Thomson and was admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania.

Early career In 1830, Murdoch moved with his wife Eliza's family to Michigan, where he co-founded and laid out the city of Berrien Springs, Michigan, later the county seat for Berrien County. Aside from establishing a homestead there, Murdoch worked as an attorney. His two-story cabin was one of the first such residences in Michigan, and is now among the oldest surviving buildings in the state. Disillusioned, he resigned and closed his law practice in Illinois.

Francis B. Murdoch has been called "one of the most important slave attorneys in the history of the St. Louis freedom suits." He filed roughly one-third of all known freedom suits between 1840 and 1847, always on behalf of the enslaved plaintiffs. Murdoch helped many of his clients establish their freedom, but in doing so, angered and annoyed slaveholders and proslavery groups. One of his daughters stayed behind in St. Louis, in the care of his father-in-law. Previously a Whig newspaper, the Telegraph became Republican in 1854, in opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act. As editor of the San Jose Telegraph, Murdoch covered the Dred Scott case without disclosing that he once represented the Scott family. On April 28, 1857, he wrote of the frustrations of representing enslaved litigants in court:

He ran the San Jose Weekly Telegraph until the fall of 1860, when he sold it to William Neill Slocum.

San Jose Patriot In 1863, Francis B. Murdoch bought out the San Jose Tribune and renamed it as the San Jose Weekly Patriot, which became a daily paper after a few years. He ran the San Jose Daily Patriot and the Daily Evening Patriot until 1875. They also had another child. The Murdochs moved to Berrien County, Michigan, in 1830. His father-in-law gave Eliza and her siblings each several acres of the 10,000 acres that he owned to establish their own homesteads. She was the daughter of Colonel John W. Johnson, a former mayor of St. Louis, and Tapissee, the daughter of the Sauk Chief Keokuk. Their first child was born in 1842.

Francis B. Murdoch died on May 10, 1882, after a severe stroke which had paralyzed him. He was buried next to his wife, Mary Elizabeth Murdoch, in the Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose.

At least two of Murdoch's sons, George and Francis, moved to Berrien Springs and established their own careers as newspapermen.