From Murray/Wilson, Compiled by S. W. Murray, Milton, PA, Oct. 1900: [Reprint from Physicians and Surgeons of America.] "Surgeon United States Marine Hospital Service, Key West, Fla., son of Joseph Arbour and Nancy (Drake) Murray, eldest grandson of John Ferguson Murray, was born April 21, 1845, at Ohlton, Trumbull county, OH. He was educated in the Bluffton Ohio, common schools, and was licensed to teach school at fifteen and again at eighteen years of age; spent the summer of 1860 as a member of a campaign brass band; enlisted [in the Civil War] as a private [in the Union Army] in the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry, U. S. A., April 18, 1861, to November 29, 1862, discharged on account of a serious wound; re-enlisted as private in the Twelfth Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, September 9, 1863, to July 10, 1865, and was promoted to sergeant and brevet lieutenant; was wounded four times, the last reported to have been fatal, and was a prisoner of war four months and a half, and is yet under parole. He commenced the study of medicine in 1865, at the Tripler United States army hospital, Columbus, OH, and later was under the preceptorship of J. Augustus Seitz, Bluffton, OH, and John E. Darby, M.D., of Cleveland; attended three courses of lectures at the Cleveland Medical College, degree of M.D., in 1868, and one course at Jefferson Medical College, from which he was graduated M.D., in 1871, having been resident physician to Philadelphia Hospital fifteen months, 1870-1871."

An excerpt from an 1887 article about Ship Island, Mississippi (the quarantine station) by his cousin, Moses Folsom, published in The Marion Weekly Star (Marion, Ohio): "Dr. R.D. Murray, the surgeon in charge of this station, know as the Gulf Quarantine, has had sixteen years of experience in this service. He was an Ohio soldier during the war [Civil War], and bears upon his face an ugly scar where a bullet, crushing through his right cheek bone and putting out his eye, left for twelve years a running sore. Half blind, and never for a conscious moment free from pain, he studied medicine these years of ordeal giving him diplomas from two leading colleges, a surgeon's commission in his present service in a competitive examination over forty four other applicants and a reputation for efficiency, faithfulness and usefulness of which any well man might be proud. There is no field of thought and investigation in which he is not a student. His career is a signal [sic] example of the triumph of mind over matter. His family, a wife and five bright children, live with him on the island."

Dr. Murray was a yellow fever specialist and expert. He was looked upon as a leader in combating yellow fever and was sent by the U.S. Government to take charge of places where yellow fever became epidemic. He was accidentally killed at Laredo, Texas, in 1903 while on duty there.