Edgar Gardner Murphy (1869–1913)

Fort Smith (Sebastian County) native Edgar G. Murphy was an Episcopal priest who became a national leader in the movement to reform child labor laws and to improve education for both Black and white children in the South and the United States. Though holding white supremist beliefs, he spent his life working for the fair treatment of all United States citizens regardless of race.

Edgar Gardner Murphy was born in Fort Smith on August 31, 1869, to Samuel Murphy and Janie Gardner Murphy. Murphy’s father deserted the family when Murphy was five years old. His mother, who suffered from tuberculosis, had to move the family to the drier climate of San Antonio, Texas. His mother supported the family by establishing a boarding house.

While recovering from rheumatic fever, Murphy became acquainted with St. Mark’s Episcopal Church rector, the Reverend Walter Richardson. After spending many hours with Richardson, Murphy made the decision to pursue a life in the priesthood. After Murphy’s graduation from San Antonio High School in 1885, Richardson was able to arrange a scholarship for him to attend the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. After leaving Sewanee in 1889, he studied at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York for a year. Some sources say he graduated from the University of the South in 1889; others say he received no degree from either institution.

In 1890, Maud King, a Vassar graduate and a new teacher at San Antonio High School, moved into Janie Murphy’s boarding house. A relationship quickly developed between her and Edgar, and the couple were married on August 31, 1891. They had two sons: Dubose, who followed in his father’s footsteps, and Gardner, who became a nationally respected psychologist.

Murphy was ordained a deacon in 1890 and a priest in 1893. By the time he left Texas in 1893, he had served churches in San Antonio and Laredo. From 1893 to 1897, he served as the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Chillicothe, Ohio, and from 1897 to 1898 at St. John’s Church in Kingston, New York. In 1896, he published his first of several books, Words of the Church. This work was followed in 1897 by his well-received The Larger Life, a defense of Episcopal theology. In late 1898, he accepted the rectorship of St. Johns Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Murphy was shocked by the poverty he witnessed in Alabama and the violence perpetrated against African Americans. Feeling that it was the duty of the upper class to lead the way to change racial attitudes and conditions, he convinced a group of twenty-four prominent Montgomery men to form the Southern Society for the Promotion of the Study of Race Conditions and Programs in the South, with a mission to bring about an “understanding of the remedies of the existing evils.” In May 1900, the society called together the Conference on Race Relations in Montgomery. As secretary of the executive committee, Murphy was responsible for much of the organizing of the meeting. Though the all-white conference made little progress, Murphy did become acquainted with Booker T. Washington on a visit to the Tuskegee Institute. The two worked together to accomplish common goals. Murphy also publicly opposed the proposal of a new Alabama constitution in 1901 that included several sections directed toward disenfranchising African Americans, including a literacy test for voting.

While Murphy continued to write and travel, making speeches on racial inequality, he also began to target the appalling employment of young children in dangerous jobs. By 1894, Alabama had no minimum age requirements for employment, and at the turn of the century twenty-five percent of the employees of the many factories in the state were under the age of sixteen. Murphy pushed a failed attempt to prohibit the employment of those under twelve in the state. In 1901, Murphy was able to convince the Conference on Race Relations to organize the Alabama Child Labor Committee. He went on to serve on the Alabama Child Labor Commission. He played a major role in the publication of thousands of pamphlets distributed throughout the United States, helping to promote child labor reform movements nationwide. In 1904, Murphy was the founding secretary of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Due to the committee’s efforts, a number of states, including Alabama, passed stricter child labor laws. Murphy would ultimately resign from the NCLC due to its support of the Beveridge Bill, which would provide federal regulation of child labor. Murphy feared that such federal control would impede any labor reform in the South.

Murphy saw improved opportunities for a quality education as a solution to many of the South’s and nation’s problems. In 1898, a group of national educators met in West Virginia and founded the Conference for Christian Education in the South, later to simply become the Conference for Education in the South. Though Murphy was too ill to attend, he was chosen as the executive secretary in 1900. On November 27, 1901, he resigned from St. Johns, deciding to devote his life to educational reform and the other reforms he had been involved in over the years. He was deposed by the church on March 30, 1903.

As executive secretary, Murphy became the face of the conference, increasing his written output and touring the country addressing numerous groups and organizations. Murphy advocated educational for reform for all races and supported federal assistance. He stated many times that, before the United States could call itself truly democratic, the nation’s educational problems had to be addressed. In part due to his efforts, many states, including Alabama, instituted educational reform measures.

Murphy had been plagued by health issues throughout his life, and by 1907, he once again was slowed by illness. As a result, by 1909, he had given up much of his reform responsibilities but still continued to write on the subject. Upon retirement in 1909, Murphy developed a new interest in astronomy and became a well-respected author in the field with his publication of A Beginner’s Star Book. He had become interested in the subject after presenting his son, Gardner, with a copy of the Scientific American with a section on constellations.

Illness continued to plague Murphy in his retirement, eventually resulting in his confinement to a chair. Still, he continued to travel with his family, which included a trip to Europe in 1912 where he received treatment at the spa in Nauheim, Germany. Murphy seemed to have recovered some after returning to his home in New York in September. However, by January 1913, he took a turn for the worse, and on June 23, 1913, he died at his home. He is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in the town of Concord, where his wife had moved to be near their two sons. Outlook magazine eulogized Murphy as “a leader not merely of Southern liberalism but of national progress in social welfare and in education.”

For additional information:
Bailey, Hugh C. Edgar Gardner Murphy: Gentle Progressive. Miami, OH: University of Miami Press, 1968.

Compton, Stephen C. “Edgar Gardner Murphy and the Child Labor Movement.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 52 (June 1983): 181–194.

“Edgar Gardner Murphy.” Montgomery Advertiser, June 29, 1913, p. 4.

“Edgar Gardner Murphy Dies in New York City.” Montgomery Advertiser, June 24, 1913, p. 1.

Going, Allen J. “The Reverend Edgar Gardner Murphy: His Ideas and Influence.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 25 (December 1956): 391–402.

Murphy, Maud King. Edgar Gardner Murphy: From Records and Memories. New York: 1943. Online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b57351&seq=1 (accessed September 18, 2026).

“The Rev. Edgar G. Murphy.” New York Herald, June 25, 1913, p. 9.

Mike Polston
CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas