Margaret Ellen Duffy was born July 9, 1874 to Thomas J. Duffy and unknown mother. Thomas was born in Ireland in and he immigrated to the U. S. in 1858. It is not known if he served in the Civil War. Son, Thomas, was born July 1867 in Illinois, and daughter, Marie, was born in Ohio a year later. Daughters, Anna, Sarah and "Maggie," and son, Johnny, were born in Pennsylvania. But in 1880, Thomas was a widower and they were back in Illinois, living in Chicago.

At the time of the 1900 census, Thomas Duffy, born in December 1836, was employed as a laborer at a mill, and lived in McKeesport, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Margaret and her brothers, Thomas and John, lived with him.

In the 1910 census of McKeesport, Mrs. Margaret Murphy, 35, is found residing in the home of her sister, Mrs. Anna Kerr, widow of John Kerr. Margaret had a son, Richard, age 4, and the record indicates she had been married once for 6 years. The husband was not in the home, but Margaret's widowed father, Thomas J. Duffy, 75, was, as well as her brother, John Duffy, 32. Mrs. Kerr's older son, J. C. Kerr, was a medical student. He did become a doctor and he served in World War I.

After graduating from the school of nursing in 1915, Margaret served in the Army Nurse Corps from April 1, 1918 until February 26, 1919. "Mrs. Margaret E. Murphy" is named in a 1922 history of the Pittsburgh Red Cross as a St. Francis nurse graduate who was "in active service with the American Expeditionary Forces and in the United States."

Margaret and her son, Richard, were living with Mrs. Kerr on Esplanade Street in Pittsburgh in 1920, and Margaret was employed as a nurse.

In 1930, Margaret E. Murphy, 55, a private nurse born in Pennsylvania, was residing in New York City with her son, Richard W., a bank clerk. Richard was married to Loretta and they had two sons, Richard A., and Glen O.

By 1940, Richard was divorced, but still in New York. Living with him were his mother, Margaret, sons Arthur and Glen, his aunt, Annie Kerr, and his uncle, John F. Duffy.

Margaret E. Murphy died on February 17, 1963, and Richard W., by then a resident of Dayton, Ohio, applied for a military headstone from the U. S. government. The gravesite is unknown but the stone was shipped to Whitmer Brothers Funeral Home, 239 N. Ludlow Street, Dayton, Ohio. The application card shows her birth year as 1874, but the date must have been checked with her Service Record, and 1889 is written over it in red. Like some other nurses, she may have understated her age in order to qualify for service in the U. S. Army during World War I.

Richard W. Murphy died December 26, 1995.