Frances Salomon Murphy (1905–1964)

Frances Salomon Murphy graduated from Pembroke College and worked for several years as a social worker in Providence, Rhode Island. She went on to become an elementary school teacher and children’s book author. She published two children’s books in the 1950s, A Nickel for Alice (1951, later reprinted as Runaway Alice) and Ready Made Family (1953). Both books were unsentimental stories of orphans growing up in the foster-care system. She also wrote a textbook for her third-grade social studies students, History of Portland, Connecticut (1969), which was published posthumously. Her husband Thomas E. Murphy, with whom she had four children, was an editorial writer for The Hart­ford Courant.