Notes for Walter Thurtell (MURRAY)

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Notes for Walter Thurtell (MURRAY)

The family tree done by Harriet Thurtell about 1900 and the History of the Thurtell Family done by Susan Persia Thurtell about 1968, both in the possession of Susan Persia Thurtell Miller, show Walter Thurtell married Mercedes.

Information received in 1997 from Peter Murray shows that James Thurtell, the father of Walter, added the last name Murray in 1829. Walter Thurtell Murray (1826-1875) married before1856 Mercedes Espinoza, who died in 1878. He shows that Walter Thurtell Murray was born in 1826 in London England, and died October 5,1875, in San Luis Obispo, California. He was a lawyer, printer, and finally a Judge of the District Court of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Buenventura, California. An ardent Republican, he was a founder of the vigilante movement, and founder and publisher of the San Luis Obispo Tribune newspaper, which was strongly Republican while he was connected with it. His initial apprenticeship was in England from age 13 to 16 in the chambers of an eminent London barrister. After moving to the United States he gained experience in the printer's trade in Boston as a compositor for a large newspaper and at the same time published on his own a small journal, the "Mechanics' Apprentice." He arrived in California on October 21, 1847, from New York in the Mexican War as a volunteer in the Stevenson Regiment having traveled around the horn and seen action in Mexico. When the regiment was disbanded in 1848, he migrated to gold rush country; and in the town of Sonora in 1851 became proprietor, with his former companion in arms, James O'Sullivan, of the first newspaper in Tuolumne County, the Sonora "Herald." Finally, in 1853, he settled in San Luis Obispo where he was admitted to the bar and established a law practice. He is described in a history of San Luis Obispo county as a man of unusual ability, fluent in French and Spanish. He married Mercedes Espinosa before 1856.

His extensive correspondence, including much with relatives and connections back in England, is preserved in the archives of Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. His unfinished memoirs are in the possession of his great grandson, Col. Murray Warden.

According to information provided by Charlotte Mackie in a letter to Susan Miller dated April11, 1999, Walter Thurtell arrived at Boston about 1843. His address was Mr. W. Murray, Mr. Turner's, 27 Brighton Street, Boston, U.S. After September 1843 the name Thurtell was no longer used. He arrived in California in 1847 and married Mercedes Espinosa before 1856. His son was born in 1856.

He is very likely the Walter Thurtell indexed on the Family Tree Maker CD 256 of Boston, Massachusetts, Passenger Lists 1821-50.

According to a web page found in November 1999 at http://www.visitslo.com/ToDo/PathOfHistory/JudgeAdobe, the "white-washed building at the end of Mission Plaza in San Luis Obispo is all that remains of the adobe home of Walter Murray, an Englishman who came to California with Stevenson's regiment in 1846." He "printed the first copies of San Luis Obispo's local newspaper, The Tribune," in the home, which is still on the "San Luis Obispo Path of History" in 1999.

He is quite possibly the Walter Murray listed in the U.S. Census for Township Number 1, Tuolumne County, California on page 144 enumerated May 2, 1850. This shows him as Walter Murray, age 25, a miner born in New York. He is listed with many other miners, so the information about his place of birth would possibly have been provided by a nonrelative who did not know him well.

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