Dave,
 
You'll find bios of Murphy in many of the many nineteenth-century
temperance histories.  He figures in one of the best of them, the Reverend
Daniel Dorchester's _Liquor Problem in All Ages_ (NY and Cincinnat, 1884).
 
Better yet though, you should hunt up a copy of _The Life and Work of
Francis Murphy and Dr. Henry A. Reynolds_, by George T. Ferris, A.M. (New
York and Cincinnati: Goodspeed & Company, 1878).  The edition I have of
this is bound into a single volume with Thurlow Weed Brown's temperance
novel, _Minnie Hermon_, by the same publishers of course.  So if you can't
find Ferris' book look for Brown's and look for it at the rear.
 
I think you'd enjoy this account of your great great grandfather.  Since I
have it now before me I'll quote some:
 
        "Francis Murphy delivered his first lecture in the City Hall,
Portland, on the 3rd day of April, 1873.  A number of gentlemen who were
highly interested in the noble cause of temperance, and interested in him,
induced him to do this..
        The success of the event was very marked.  The hall was crowded by
a curious and eager crowd.  Our subject was somewhat embarrassed as he
stepped forward on the platform, and stood before all those eyes; but this
feeling was transitory.  He forgot self and his surroundings, as he spoke
of his life, and argued for his cause, rising often to sonorous eloquence.
The audience was moved to tears, and then to laughter, when his well
known, genial humor would burst out in quaint bits of rhetoric.
        That evening he received over sixty applications to lecture in
other cities.  He was amazed and delighted."
 
An orator could make quite a living in the late nineteenth-century
speaking before packed houses in any small or large town accessible by
rail (many of these houses would show movies in the early twentieth
century, I'd guess).  The temperance lecture was a staple on yearly
lecture programs throughout the country.  You might look for info on such
itinerant work in biographies of Dickens, Emerson, and Twain, who all had
other things to say but probably traveled some of the same circuits.  John
Gough and David Ross Locke were two of the more famous temperance
lecturers working in Murphy's day, and Gough at least has an autobiography
which might also give you some sense of Murphy's life.  If you want to see
what contemporary historians have to say about Murphy, start with Jack
Blocker's _Cycles of Reform_ and Mark Lender and James Martin's _Drinking
in America_.  There's more contemporary stuff on the women reformers than
on the men reformers of Murphy's day, but Murphy was so famous I'd bet
you'll catch references to him in many of the recent books on the WCTU.
 
I got interested in Murphy when, in a local junk store, I found a copy of
some minor temperance novel, by a lady Iowan, inscribed to Murphy "the
temperance lecturer."  I guess he must have left it behind.  Anyway, he
was quite a hit in this part of the country.  As this Murphy bio puts it,
"He went to Iowa and Illinois.  In these States, his advent was hailed
with exclamations of delight. Wherever he went, he did wonderful good; and
the people loved him.  In Iowa and Illinois, no one is so well known, so
respected, and so admired as Francis Murphy.  His name is a household
word.  And hundreds upon hundreds fall down on bended knees, and pray to
God to shower blessings on the head of him, who brought them out of the
thick shadows of the valley of sin and death."
 
Some man!
 
Jon Miller
University of Iowa