MURPHY, JOHN JOSEPH

Publisher and printer; b. County Tyrone, Ireland, March 12, 1812; d. Baltimore, MD, May 27, 1880. His parents, Bernard and Mary (McCullough) Murphy, immigrated to Delaware when John was ten years old. After attending New Castle Academy, Delaware, he learned printing in Philadelphia and about 1835 moved to Baltimore where he established a book and stationery store. He married Margaret E. O'Donnoghue (1852), who died in 1869; they had seven children. During his publishing career, which began in 1836, he issued 1,458 editions of 817 titles, the peak year being 1860 with 91 imprints. Spiritual reading and devotional works constituted the largest category with 100 entries, the most famous being Cardinal Gibbons's The Faith of Our Fathers, which sold more than two million copies. As the publisher of documents pertaining to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception he was awarded a papal gold medal in 1855; for the Acta et Decreta of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (see baltimore, councils of), he was given the title of "Typographer of the Holy See." In the field of serials, he published the U.S. Catholic Magazine (1842–49), later absorbed by the Catholic Mirror. He launched one of the earliest Catholic juveniles, the Catholic Youth Magazine (1857–61), and was the publisher (1859–61) of the Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's Directory, begun (1833) as the U.S. Catholic Almanac. The Murphy imprint appeared on many speeches, especially of those of congressmen, on five by Jefferson Davis, for example, and on several by Stephen Douglas. For a quarter of a century he published for the Maryland Historical Society of which he was a member. The Murphy firm was dissolved in 1943 and the New York firm of P. J. Kenedy took over the assets.

[e. p. willging]