Murdock family papers, 1850s-1970s

Joseph and Sally emigrated from Nauvoo to Utah in 1847 as part of the Ira Eldridge Company. Their son Joseph Stacey emigrated with his wife Eunice in the same company. In 1860, Joseph Stacey with his wives moved to the Heber City vicinity where Joseph was appointed Bishop. Between 1867 and 1870 Joseph Stacey served a mission in the South to study cotton cultivation. In 1889 Joseph Stacey was sentenced to one month in the Utah State Penitentiary for unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Law. Eunice, the first wife, was already dead but Joseph Stacey refused to marry again one of his other wives and repudiate the others. When Joseph Stacey died in 1899 he had fathered 32 children, 7 of which preceded him in death.

John Heber Murdock married Mary Gallagher in 1873 and she and their children accompanied him on his first mission in 1884 to St. John's, Arizona. Mary died in childbirth shortly before the family left Arizona in 1890. John Heber returned to Heber City and lived in his mothers' house. He married a second time in 1895 to Emily Ann Bond. He had thirteen children by the two wives. After completing a second mission to Virginia in 1907-1908 he returned to Heber City. In 1920 he moved his family to Pleasant View on the east bench of Provo and then in 1930 moved into Provo. He moved once more in 1933 to Orem where he died in 1941.

Further biographical information on the family can be found in the collection.