John Gilbert Murray (1846-1938) was born in Niagara, New York, and died in San Gabriel, California. By 1860 he had moved with his family to Van Buren, Iowa. He served as a private in Company G, 8th Regiment, of the Iowa Cavalry of the Union Army in the American Civil War. After the war he moved to Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, and became a house painter. In the early 1870s he married Emma C. Murray (b. Roff). They divorced prior to 1880, and around that time he relocated to Rochester, New York, where he married Harriet "Hattie" J. Case (b. Wright) in 1888. He worked in Rochester as a clerk and a woodworker. In the mid-1880s Murray received Christian Science treatment from Mary E. Southworth who had studied Christian Science with Annie V. C. Leavitt and who later became a student of Mary Baker Eddy. In 1887 Murray wrote a letter to Eddy to order Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and to express his interest in studying with her, although the available records do not indicate that he did. Murray advertised as a metaphysician in the Rochester City Directory from 1890 through 1909, at which time he moved into the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Dayton, Ohio, transferring to another one in Los Angeles County, California by 1930.

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