Murdoch land to Harper
While reading my local community newspaper today I came across an article regarding the sale of one of our community’s oldest homes. The William Harper Home is listed as being circa 1854, some forty plus years before Webster Groves was incorporated. What caught my eye is that William Harper supposedly bought the land around 1854 from Murdock & Dixson [sic]. This would be the same John Murdock and his partner Charles Dickson that I have been researching with regards to Murdock Farm. (You can find out more about this research in my earlier post.) If the information written is accurate, that means that Murdock may have owned the land earlier than I thought. My assumption to date has been that Murdock, perhaps along with his partner Dickson, had purchased the land around the time that Murdock married Dickson’s niece in 1855. That is also when he appears in the St. Louis City Directories as no longer living in the city but instead residing “in country”.
So what will I do with this information? First I am going to contact the current owner of the Harper Home to see if she can verify where the 1854 purchase information came from. If she does not know, I will go to the library and look through the Deed Index to see if I can find William Harper purchasing the land from Murdock and Dickson. If I can locate the deed it will verify that Murdock owned the land prior to the date I had in mind, and it also may provide further clues within the deed as to when Murdock himself purchased the land. Keeps your eyes open as you browse through newspapers. You never know when a clue may pop out.