From Murphy to Miley: A Carolina Family’s Journey of Faith

Carrie Tate loved growing up in North Carolina mountain parsonages and longed to follow in her father’s footsteps as an ordained minister. In the early twentieth century, even her beloved Papa could not encourage her. Carrie turned to her love of books and learning and traveled to St. Matthews in the midlands of South Carolina to teach school. There she met and married native son, Saylor Jumper. The pair raised ten children through the years of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. An unexpected, unwelcome move to the low-country lumber mill town of Miley seemed a disruption. As years passed, Carrie and Saylor acknowledged life in Miley as God’s long-term assignment. A serious accident, fire, and war lay ahead. Today remnants of the mill remain, but the once noisy, bustling town of Miley has vanished, replaced by quiet fields and pine woods, where the wind still whispers memories of the music and mission of a family of faith. From MURPHY to MILEY is a novel of historical fiction, a family saga inspired by the author’s grandparents. Carrie and Saylor Jumper lived in a fallen, sinful, war-torn world. Their steadfast faith in God undergirded, sustained, and directed their lives. As their oldest granddaughter, Jane Farmer’s visits to Miley instilled in her a lifelong wish to recapture sights, sounds, smells, and people of the once-vibrant little town. It is her hope that, through the pages of this story, Miley will live again.