WILLIAM W. MURPHY was born in Ligonier, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, July 27th, 1837. On leaving school in 1854, he went to California, seeking his fortune in the gold-mines. Here he remained till 1861, when he returned to his native state, and took up his residence in Pittsburg. When the call came for volunteers for the Union army, he assisted in raising Company G, of the 14th Pennsylvania Regiment, and entered the service as 2nd Lieutenant of that company. He was promoted to a first lieutenancy, on his merit as an officer; was brevetted Captain by the Secretary of War for gallantry on the field of battle at Piedmont, Va., and was appointed as Captain of Company D in the same regiment, the first vacancy occurring after the brevet. During the first two years of the war he served in West Virginia, one year under Gen. Sheridan. After Lee’s surrender, Capt. Murphy’s regiment was ordered to Texas, overland; but when they had reached Leavenworth, Kansas, they received news of the surrender of all the rebel forces in Texas, and the regiment was mustered out at Leavenworth. He received a gunshot wound in the elbow at Lexington, and a sabre wound in the head and another in the arm in a cavalry charge at Piedmont. In 1866 Capt. Murphy married and settled in Madelia, Minnesota, where he engaged in farming and stock-raising. He has ever been a highly respected and influential citizen, and in 1871 was elected to the Legislature, where he served with credit. He is a man of marked intelligence, especially upon agricultural subjects and is possessed of great coolness and daring. When he came upon the field at the Watonwan, where the robbers were to be routed out of their hiding-place, his assumption of command was accepted as quite a matter of course. THOMAS LENT VOUGHT was descended on his father’s side from one of the old colonial Dutch families of New York, and on the side of his mother from the early pioneers of Orange County. He was born in Walcott, Wayne County, April 29th, 1833. His boyhood was chiefly spent on his father’s farm on the shore of Lake Ontario, He lost his mother by death when he was seven years old, and his father at seventeen. In the year preceding the father’s death the family had emigrated to Rock county, Wisconsin. At nineteen years of age Thomas went to La Crosse, where he was employed first as a lumberman and afterwards in a hotel, and where, in 1827, he was married to Miss Hester Green. Two years later the young people settled on a farm at Bryce Prairie, where they remained until the opening of the War of the Rebellion. Mr. Vought then enlisted in the 14th Wisconsin Regiment, in which he served throughout the War.