• Dayton's National Park

    Dayton Aviation Heritage

    National Historical Park Ohio

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Robert Murphy's Life Story

Robert Small Murphy
August 1, 1866; fl. 1940
Half-brother to Paul through their mother, Robert was born at the home of his maternal grandmother on Howard Street in Dayton, Ohio, the son of R. Weeks (or Wilson or Wills) Murphy and Matilda Burton, who separated before Robert’s birth. Robert attended schools in Dayton through the eighth grade before gaining employment as a janitor for the Beckel House, a Dayton hotel.

In 1887, Robert married a woman, perhaps a Ms. Holland, with whom he had five children. At a date before the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, he and his family moved to Chicago, where Robert worked for the city’s public schools system. Robert attended his mother’s funeral in Dayton in 1938, and died some time after February of 1940.

Did You Know?

Replica 1905 hangar at the Huffman Prairie Flying Field

The Wright brothers continued their flying experiments here on this cow pasture in Dayton, Ohio in 1904 and 1905, perfecting their machine and building the world's first practical airplane.