Holiday Tales: Christmas in the Adirondacks

William Henry Harrison Murray (1840-1904), also known as Adirondack Murray, was a clergyman and author of an influential series of articles and books which popularized the Adirondacks; he became known as the father of the Outdoor Movement. He graduated from Yale in 1862 and served as a minister in Greenwich, Connecticut and Meriden, Connecticut from 1869 through 1873. He also delivered Sunday evening lectures about the Adirondacks in a Boston music-hall that proved highly popular, and he published a series of articles based on the lectures in a Meriden newspaper. In 1869, they were published as a book, Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks. The literary tone of the book made it extremely successful; it went through eight printings in its first year. His other works include: Music-Hall Sermons (1870), Words Fitly Spoken (1873), The Perfect Horse (1873), Sermons Delivered From Park Street Pulpit (1874), Adirondack Tales (1877), Deacons (1875), How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's and Other Stories (1887) and Holiday Tales: Christmas in the Adirondacks (1897).