Product Code Database
Lindley Murray (1745 – 16 February 1826) was an American Quakers lawyer, writer, and , best known for his English-language grammar books used in schools in England and the United States.
Murray practised law in New York. As the colonies began to fight for independence with the American Revolution (1765–1783) and in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Murray sat on the Committee of Sixty and the Committee of One Hundred to manage events in the Province of New York. Some Quakers did not want him to be associated with a public committee. Still, he sat on the committee to protect his family's shipping interests, which would be inhibited by the Continental Association's nonimportation clause. Murray spent the first half of the Revolutionary War in Islip, Long Island, living leisurely. With British troops in control of Manhattan, Murray returned to the island and joined his father in the import-export and shipping businesses that made him rich during the second half of the war.
In 1783, Murray retired, and one year later, he left America for England. Settling at Holgate, near York, he devoted the rest of his life to literary pursuits. His first book was Power of Religion on the Mind (1787). In 1795, he issued his Grammar of the English Language. This was followed by English Exercises, and the English Reader. These books passed through several editions, and the Grammar was the standard textbook for fifty years throughout England and America. While he was able, he was an active member of the local Quaker Meeting.
As he was growing up, Murray saw and met with people from around the world and heard the latest news of those who visited his parents. He received an education founded on values of the Age of Enlightenment. When six years old, he was sent to a Quaker school in Philadelphia, but soon departed for North Carolina with his parents, where they lived until 1753. They then moved to New York, where Murray attended school, but it proved difficult. Against his wishes, at fourteen, he was sent to work at his father's accounting firm; Murray was mainly interested in science and literature. He left home to study at a Burlington, New Jersey boardingschool, and started to study French. His parents brought him back to New York and hired a private tutor. His father still wanted him to go into business, but in a letter, Lindley argued so convincingly for a literary career that his father's lawyer suggested letting Murray study law.
Murray and his wife followed his father to England by 1770 and lived there for up to four years. Once he returned to Colonial America, he was among the Quaker founders and a director of the Union Library Society, with about 1,000 volumes.
Murray's father, Robert, tried to have British goods unloaded starting 1 February, when a ship arrived at his dock, but was unsuccessful. In the middle of the month, a ship that he owned, with his goods from Britain on it, was prevented from docking. Robert sent a ship from his business in Elizabeth, New Jersey to come alongside the loaded Beulah near Staten Island. Murray family members and crew from the ships unloaded 1.5 or 2 tons of cargo onto the ship from Elizabeth. The clandestine event was discovered, harming Robert's and other Murray family members' reputation and financial position. The Committee of Sixty were faulted by other colonies for not preventing the ship from being unloaded. Robert was nearly banned from the city.
The Committee of Sixty grew to the Committee of One Hundred and Murray remained on the committee, although he continued to get pressure from Quakers to remove himself from the public committee. He dealt with the anger that some of the city's residents had about the Beulah affair.
With the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (19 April 1775 – 3 September 1783), Murray went with his wife to Islip, Long Island, where they lived for four years, fishing, shooting, and sailing. He returned to New York in 1779.
Murray left the city that was in turmoil at the beginning of the war. Over the time he was gone, the British gained control of the city. Since he was considered to be loyal to the British troops, he may have lived in the city safely. In 1779, Murray decided to work for his father, Robert Murray, as a merchant. Murray earned a fortune by the end of the war. The British troops left the city after the signing of the Treaty of Paris (3 September 1783). Once the soldiers left the city, loyalists did not benefit from their protection.
After he retired, Murray and his wife Hannah moved to a manor that he named Bellevue. (Bellevue Hospital is named after the estate.) His estate was near his father, about north of the city (now Lower Manhattan). He had developed a painful muscular problem, and had little success with treatments he received.
Murray's first published work, The Power of Religion on the Mind was originally published in 1787, and it was in its 20th edition in 1842. It was twice translated into French. "Extracts from the Writings of divers Eminent Men representing the Evils of Stage Plays, &c." was added to the 8th edition in 1795.
As requested by teachers at a Quakers school for girls in York, he wrote suitable lesson books, including his English Grammar that was published in 1795. The work became rapidly popular; it went through nearly fifty editions, was edited, abridged, simplified, and enlarged in England and America, and for a long time was used in schools to the exclusion of all other grammar books. Influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, Murray's book won Abraham Lincoln's approval and is said to have inspired anti-slavery sentiment in America and abroad.
In 1816, an edition corrected by the author was issued in 2 volumes. An 'Abridgment' of this version by Murray, issued two years later, went through more than 120 editions of 10,000 each. In 1835, it was printed at the New England Institution for the Blind in embossed characters. Two years later, it was translated into Marathi and published in Bombay. English Exercises followed (1797), with A Key (1847). Murray's English Reader, Sequel, and Introduction, issued respectively in 1799, 1800, and 1801, were equally successful, as well as the Lecteur Francais, 1802, and Introduction to the Lecteur Francais, 1807. An English Spelling Book, 1804, and was translated into Spanish (1841). First Book for Children was published with portrait and woodcuts in 1859. In addition to the praises that his works , he was criticised for his failure to provide sufficient etymology and to have published mistakes.
The sales of the Grammar, Exercises, Key, and Lecteur Francais brought Murray in each case £700, and he devoted the whole sum to philanthropic objects. The copyright of his religious works he presented to his publishers. By his will, a sum of money for the purchase and distribution of religious literature was vested in trustees in America. When The Retreat was founded in York by William Tuke in 1792, Murray continued Tuke's efforts to introduce a humane system of treatment.
Built in 1850, the one-room Lindley Murray schoolhouse of East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, was named for Murray.
Murray's will established a testamentary trust with purposes including the education of Black persons and Native Americans, distribution of Christian books, and relief of the poor. The trust is now managed by the New York Yearly Meeting and still supports its original goals.
|
|
