THE MURPHREE ANCESTRY 19
 Colonel Walter Murphree of Gadsden relates that his
 grandfather built up quite a reputation as a deer hunter,
 which sport he followed to his later years. At the age of
 eighty-seven he went on a deer hunt and killed his quota. He
 was regarded as a leading citizen and was consulted by neigh-
 bors in the settlement of differences. In those days, when
 courts were not so readily accessible, Ellis Murphree was
 recognized as an arbitrator of the community, as a peace-
 maker and factor for community stability.
 He was a deeply religious man, and attended old Shiloh
 Methodist Church near his home. He died April 3, 1892,
 in his ninetieth year.
 Of course, the war between the states played havoc both
 with his family and his worldly possessions. His son, Jesse
 Ellis Murphree (President Murphree's father) was severely
 wounded in the battle at Shiloh. Another son, Daniel Alex-
 ander Murphree, was killed in action on April 6, 1861. The
 third son, Stephen, also shouldered arms for the Confederacy,
 and after living through the bitter struggle, died in Septem-
 ber, 1869.
 When Jesse Ellis Murphree came back from the war, he
 found his father's slaves freed, their lands laid waste, and
 much of their property destroyed. He set about the diffi-
 cult task of building his own home. He settled forty acres
 of land joining the home place. He lived there until 1870
 and then moved to about fifteen miles north of the settlement
 of Chepultepec where he bought a tannery and engaged in the
 making of leather and leather products such as shoes, sad-
 dles and harnesses. He remained there until about 1880
 when he moved with his family to the western part of Etowah
 county to the village of Walnut Grove, where his children
 spent most of their growing years.
 Jesse Ellis Murphree had married at the beginning of the
war in 1860. His bride was the daughter of another well-
known family of pioneers from South Carolina, Emily Helen
Cornelius. Her father was Harvey Cornelius and her mother
was a member of a pioneer Fite family. Her grandfather
was Tabby Cornelius of revolutionary war days in South
Carolina. The Cornelius family was English in its ancestry.