Background on Charles N. Murdock
Shortly after Charles Nathaniel Murdock was born in Brookline, Mass., in 1836, his father Thomas Marean Murdock died at the age of 27. From these challenging beginnings, Charles made his way upward. At 14 years old, he was reported in the 1850 census as living in the house of Ephraim Stone, and his path appears to have upward from there.
As a young man, Murdock apparently held various jobs, making shoes and working as a carpenter, but after a year of service in the 4th Massachusetts Heavy Artillery near the end the Civil War, he returned to Stow and began in the grocery trade. By 1870, he operated a country store in the Rock Bottom section of Stow, Massachusetts, renting a house from Rufus Temple in the neighboring town of Hudson. In the census that year, he reported real estate worth $550 and personal property of $2,000.
In about 1870, Murdock seems to have changed course. In the census, he reported his occupation as "(ret) Grocer," and while he store appeared in a business directory for 1872 as a country store, it disappeared thereafter. In later years, Murdock was listed as a farmer.
Murdock was married twice, first to Julia Temple in 1862, with whom he had two children, and then to Lucie Blair Curtis on Dec. 25, 1876. He died in Stow on May, 3 1904.
