A pastor’s double life unearthed

The letter noted that it was rumored that Murphy was actually the illegitimate son of David Johnston and “a woman highly connected in life – no less than the daughter and the sister of his greatest earthly benefactors – one of the most respectable families in the state,” who after giving birth foisted the child on Jane. Bevier and Westbrook rejected the rumor as absurd. “Can a mother forget her son – and have no compassion upon her own flesh? Yet this mother forgets, can see her own son press the breasts of an African foster-mother and assimilate himself to the sable inmates of a kitchen,” they wrote.

Furthermore, they accused Murphy of a cover-up. He had bribed one of his “discoverers” with a half-dollar to send a letter on his behalf to his mother in exchange for his vote in the next election, they claimed. What particularly outraged them was Murphy’s alleged deceit and chutzpah in defending himself. “The discovery of his own awful dilemma should have covered him with shame, and have imposed on him the most subdued silence,” they fumed. Instead, he responded by presenting “the bold front of the impudent Bravado.”

Stessin-Cohn dug up David Johnston’s will at the Dutchess County archives, which alludes to “my negro man James, the son of my negro wench, Jane,” and singles him out for manumission, as noted. She also discovered that Johnston’s lineage was particularly distinguished: His grandfather had been mayor of New York City, and before the Revolution, David had belonged to the “Committee of 15 Gentlemen,” in the company of John Jay and Philip Livingston, whose purpose was to communicate with New York’s sister colonies. Johnston, who was based in New York, established his country seat, located in the town of Washington, near present-day Millbrook, in 1760. Originally consisting of 5,000 acres and noted for its fine fruit trees, it was one of the largest estates in the Hudson Valley.

The house and estate, still encompassing hundreds of acres, according to Stessin-Cohn, is today occupied by Eliot Clarke, a former financial services executive. During a visit to the mansion, Stessin-Cohn observed slave chains hanging over an archway. She visited the former slave quarters, consisting of a row of stalls in the basement, their barred wooden doors still intact.

Johnston’s son John, who by the 1820s had sold his father’s estate and was living in Hyde Park, was one of Dutchess County’s first judges. He was married to Susanna Bard, whose father, Samuel Bard, was a noted doctor and philanthropist: He was George Washington’s personal physician and started Columbia Medical School. In contrast to the sordid conditions below ground, “The people upstairs were rich and famous,” Stessin-Cohn noted.

A search of the 1820 local census revealed another surprise: Murphy himself had four slaves, three of whom were female, and all under age 26. “Could they have been his relatives, or was he hiding his origins by being a slaveowner himself?” wondered Stessin-Cohn. In addition, he shared his household with his wife Catharine, a native of Albany, and four children, born between 1815 and 1823. The census also revealed that Ann DeWitt Bevier was his next-door neighbor.

According to the Memorial letter and Stessin-Cohn’s research, Murphy responded to Bevier and Westbrook’s accusations by delivering a sermon asking for sympathy and collecting 1,700 to 2,000 signatures in his support. The record indicates that the church was on his side: The classis initially refused to hear the complaints, and a committee to which the synod in Albany referred the case wrote that the attacks were of a “malicious character.”

But Bevier and Westbrook kept up the pressure. Sometime in the winter of 1824, Murphy confessed to his consistory and was forgiven. Later that year, he agreed to surrender his license as minister if Bevier and Westbrook would agree not to publish proceedings of the case. Stessin-Cohn said that she could find no records of the case in the church archives, seeming to confirm the women’s agreement to this. In June 1824, Murphy’s ministerial license was restored.

But in 1826 he left the Rochester classis – an event that a letter to the Synod in Albany written by an Honorable Roweyn of Kingston that December regards with dismay. “It is much to be regretted that there should be among you ‘busy bodies in other men’s matters’ attempting not only to ‘subvert governments’ but promising those ‘divisions and dissatisfactions’ which have so long existed, instead of preaching peace and reconciliation to you in sincerity and truth,” he writes. The abandoned congregation is like sheep without a shepherd and in danger of losing its way, he notes.