William Henry Harrison Murray

William Henry Harrison Murray (1840 – 1904), also known as Adirondack Murray, was a clergyman and author of an influential series of articles and books which popularized the Adirondacks; he became known as the father of the Outdoor Movement.

Born in Guilford, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale in 1862 and served as a minister in Greenwich, Connecticut and Meriden, Connecticut from 1869 through 1873. He also delivered Sunday evening lectures about the Adirondacks in a Boston music-hall that proved highly popular, and he published a series of articles based on the lectures in a Meriden newspaper. In 1869, they were published as a book, Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks.

The literary tone of the book made it extremely successful; it went through eight printings in its first year. Murray promoted New York's north woods as health-giving and spirit-enhancing, claiming that the rustic nobility typical of Adirondack woodsmen came from their intimacy with wilderness. A subsequent printing, subtitled "Tourist's Edition", included maps of the region and train schedules from various Eastern cities to the Adirondacks.

Although the book was to become one of the most influential books in the conservation movement of the 19th century, paradoxically, within five years it led to the building of over 200 "Great Camps" in the Adirondacks; "Murray’s Fools" poured into the wilderness each weekend, packing specially scheduled railroad trains.

Publications

*"Camp Life in the Adirondacks" (Boston, 1868)
*"Music-Hall Sermons" (1870-1873)
*"Words Fitly Spoken" (1873)
*"The Perfect Horse" (1873)
*"Sermons delivered from Park Street Pulpit" (1874)
*"Adirondack Tales" (1877)
*"How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney kept New Year, and other Stories" (1887)
*"The Story of The Keg and The Man Who Didn't Know Much" (1889)

ources

*Jerome, Christine "Adirondack Passage: Cruise of Canoe Sairy Gamp", HarperCollins, 1994.

External links

* [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AFK3913.0001.001 Full text of "Camp Life in the Adirondacks"]
* [http://onlinebooks.110mb.com/nessmuk/woodcraft.htm Winston Smith has posted an illustrated HTML version of "Adventures in the Wilderness"]