THE MURPHREE ANCESTRY 21

 During the first ten years of Albert's life, the family lived
near the tannery, where hides were transformed into the
leather with which were made shoes and harness. His boy-
hood from the age of ten until the age of eighteen when he went
away to teach school, was spent at the old home near Walnut
Grove.
 His oldest brother, Col. W. T. Murphree, tells some inter-
esting incidents relative to their early school days:
 "Our schools were the typical one-room log cabins of that
day. The first school house Albert attended was such a struc-
ture, to which we walked three miles and from which we
walked three miles back home again at night.
 "The seats in that school were made by splitting logs and
fitting legs into them. At first we did not have any desks.
Our books were few. Our writing and ciphering was done on
slates. Father and some other men got together and built a
long desk with the hand-planed surface, and we were tre-
mendously proud of that. For ink, we had pokeberry juice
or 'nutgall.' This latter ink was made from the ball that
grows on the oak tree. We would take the balls and boil them
in water. A dark brown juice was the result, which made a
very acceptable ink. Our drinking water came from a spring
and was carried into the school room in a cedar bucket, from
which we all drank out of a common gourd."
 Albert Murphree started to school at the age of six. When
the family moved to Walnut Grove, he continued school there
and through the grades and what was then a junior college
known as "Walnut Grove College." This institution was regu-
larly chartered by the Alabama legislature, but was subse-
quently merged into what is now high schooL
 Colonel Walter Murphree, oldest brother of Albert, taught
at the Walnut Grove College while Albert and his brothers
were students there. "We were all interested in music,"
Colonel Murphree recalls. "I organized a brass band at the
college. We got a bunch of cheap horns, and the din we must
have created in the practicing was terrific. However, we
played some very acceptable music after a while. I played a
comet. By brother Bert and my brother Claude played other
instruments. Albert, I remember, played the E flat bass. We