Carol R. Murphy Papers

Carol Rozier Murphy (1916-1994) was a Quaker writer and longtime editor and contributor to publications produced at Pendle Hill Quaker Study Center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

She was born in Boston, Mass., Dec. 7, 1916, the only child of Mildred Johnston Knight (1889-1974) and Charles Rozier Murphy (1884-1936). Her father was a Harvard graduate and poet and her mother an amateur artist and musician; according to her autobiography, they had married contrary to the wishes of their families who were well-to-do Philadelphians. After a childhood of home schooling and little contact with children and outsiders in rural Massachusetts, the family moved to the Philadelphia area so that Carol might attend Quaker schools. Her father had become interested in the tenets of Quakerism and began a compilation of Quaker poetry, working at Friends Historical Library. In 1928 the family became convinced Friends, joining the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting. The family was tight-knit, reading aloud together nightly until Mildred's death in 1974.

Carol Murphy attended Westtown School 1929-1933, and the family moved to Swarthmore when she began her studies at Swarthmore College. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 and earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American University in 1941. In 1947, she began her long association with Pendle Hill, where she found her true vocation in writing, editing, and contemplation. She wrote more than seventeen pamphlets for Pendle Hill as well as for other Quaker publications on topics such as pastoral care, comparative religion, religious psychology, and meditation. In 1951, she took a course on pastoral counseling at the Garrett Biblical Institute, and in 1952 she joined the Pendle Hill Publications Committee. In her later years, Carol Murphy also was active on various Quaker library boards and in the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting.