Joseph S. Murray, Former Resident Honored at Rites

ASHLEY -- Funeral services were held Monday at 1 p.m. in a Sacramento, California LDS Chapel for Joseph Smith Murray, 71, former Vernal resident, who died Friday evening March 7 at 8 p.m. of a heart ailment.

Burial in Sacramento.

Mr. Murray was born June 19, 1880 in Spanish Fork, a son of Mary Ashby and Jeremiah Hatch Murray. He came to Vernal with his parents in November 1886 and settled in November 1886 and settled in Mill Ward, now called Maeser, where they purchased 40 acres of ground from William Bradshaw.

That fall they went into the mountains and cut timber to build and cut timber to build a large room for their winter home. The next year the place was cleared and an orchard planted, which they watered by carrying water in buckets from the old mill race canal. In later years they built one of the first brick homes by burning their own brick.

Mr. Murray received his early schooling in Maeser Ward and graduated from the old Uintah Academy and BYU at Provo.

He was married to Lillie Davis June 20, 1902 at Vernal. It was later solemnized in the LDS Temple at Salt Lake City. To this union was born three boys and five girls.

He was a school teacher for thirty-eight years. He taught in Maeser, Naples, Davis, Union and Roosevelt.

They moved to Chandler, Arizona November 1922, where he taught school for 17 years. In 1942, they moved to Sacramento where they have made their home since. He worked at McClellan Air Force Base for 10 years and in the office of the City Bus Lines for two years.

Survivors are his wife, daughter, Mrs. James (Flora) Lippert and Mrs. Walter (Reva) Kintzley, Citrus Heights, California. Mrs. Olenen (Mary) Watkins, Sacramento; Mrs. Carl (Marie) Langford, Redding, California; Mrs. Paul (Donna) Hart, El Monte, California; one son, John R. Murray, Gilt, California; a brother, William A. Murray, Vernal, 18 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

-Vernal Express, March 13, 1958