Jesse Francis MURPHY

                   Family Book by Sprague.  This section written by the daughter of Jesse Francis Murphy and Agnes Dean Syphus -

Jesse Francis Murphy was fourteen years old when he moved to St. Thomas with his family. Our mother, Agnes Dean Syphus was born in Panaca, Vevada and came with her family to St. Thomas when she was a year and a half.  She was a young lady of almost fourteen at the time Jesse Francis Murphy came to town.  Jesse Francis Murphy and Agnes Dean Syphus were married October 20, 1910 in the St. George Temple.  It was a four day round trip from St. Thomas to St. George, Utah.  Granpa Whitney took them in a "white top" buggy.  Mom and Dad set up housekeeping in a little house on Grandpa and Grandma Whitney's lot in St. Thomas.  They lived in this location for a few years.  Several of their children were born there.  This little house was later moved and added on to the house at the Murphy farm thus making it four rooms with two cellar rooms. The outside of the house was weathered board, the inside was rough, but was later finished with tongue and grove, by a man named Joe Pearson.  The kitchen always remained unfinished, accomodations were crowded but there was plenty of love to go around.  Dad was a very hard working man.  He farmed well, planted and took care of crops during the growing season.  During the winter months he looked for work in the surrounding areas.  He worked in the mines at Goodsprings several times thru the years, also on construction crews for the Union Pacific Railroad.  This took him away from his family for weks or sometimes months at a time.  When refigeration came into being and allowed crops to be shipped greater distances, the melon crop, which was a money crop, was gradually fazed out.  The melons ripened earlier in the Imperial Valley and therefore got to market long before crops in Moapa Valley were ripe.   Dad raised turkeys and feed for the turkeys.  He dresed themand hauled them to market in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  Mom tended a vegetable garden and flower garden.  She had a passion for growing flowers and even carried water to them if necessary.  Mom always had an oxyalis plant potted and blooming in the
house.  This sounds like all Mom did, but as a wife and mother of eleven children this gardening was her hobby and relaxation.  Mom lived and died as a pioneer woman.  Her home never had electricity nor running water.  St. Thomas was home and security to all of us but knowing the homesite would soon become extinct due to the waters of Lake Mead, Mom and Dad traveled looking for a new place that would feel like home.  They searched in California, Utah and Idaho.
Dad even went back to the area of his boyhood home in Utah but found it didn't feel lie home anymore. They then decided to relocate in Overton, Nevada.  They moved to forty acres north of Overton.  Some of this property was under cultivation - but most of it had laid fallow for some years.  A new house was built and the family relocated in the fall of 1934.  So it was started all over
with a new farm.  Mom and Dad were there only three and a half years before their death.  Grandpa Whitneys comments about the farm were, "Jess has accomplished more in the few years that most could in ten years."