John Bernard Murphy

John Bernard Murphy. . , Born in 1821, in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, John Bernard Murphy immigrated to the United States in 1845. Upon arriving in New Orleans, Murphy joined the United States Army as a staff reporter under General Zachary Taylor at the onset of war with Mexico. Murphy earned the rank of Captain before being discharged on October 4, 1846. Murphy began studying law when he married Margaret Mary Healy on May 4, 1849, near Matamoros. Shortly after, the couple relocated to the Irish settlement of San Patricio., Murphy served terms as Chief Justice and District Attorney in both San Patricio and Nueces counties. He held many positions of trust during his legal and political career, one being a delegate representing Nueces County, Thirteenth District, to the 1875 Texas Constitutional Convention which wrote a new constitution after reconstruction. First elected in 1880, Murphy became Mayor of Corpus Christi. According to city records, as Murphy began his term as Mayor, the city was heavily in debt with an empty treasury. By the end of his term, the city's credit was restored and debt repaid., Due to illness, John Bernard Murphy died a few weeks after his resignation, on July 4, 1884. During Murphy's tenure as Mayor, the city erected streetlights, dug trenches to divert water, provided means to help the poor and served to preserve law and order. At the time of his death, Corpus Christi boasted several schools, a telephone exchange, an opera house, and a mineral well providing clean drinking water, along with beaches, hotels, sailing and fishing for tourists. John and Margaret adopted two orphans and were active in charity work as well as charter members of the first Catholic Church in corpus Christi. The Murphys are buried in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery.