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Simon Murdock House

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Simon Murdock was a Civil War veteran and an important member of the New Windsor African-American community following the war.

Simon Murdock, a farmer in the New Windsor area, enlisted in Company F of the 4th Regiment United States Colored Troops on August 4, 1863, at the age of twenty-six. He was struck on the forehead by a shell on June 15, 1864, near Petersburg, Virginia and sent to Summit House General Hospital in Philadelphia. He was honorably discharged from the hospital on May 5, 1865, with a Certificate of Disability. Though he never fully recovered from his wound, Murdock was still very active in the New Windsor community. He was a member, and also president, of the local New Windsor veterans’ organization for African-American Civil War soldiers, the Thaddeus Stevens Post of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). He married Cecilia Murdock in 1870 and lived in New Windsor as a farm laborer. He and Cecilia saw seven children live to adulthood and took in many of their grandchildren. Murdock died in April 1933, well into his nineties.

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