Murchison was a flag station on the old Rome Railroad where it crossed the Duncan Murchison family farm approximately four miles west of Kingston. Originally chartered as The Memphis Branch Railroad and Steamboat Company in 1839, it was completed in December, 1849, connecting steamboat traffic on the Coosa River in Rome with the Western & Atlantic Railroad at Kingston. The point at which the railroad crossed the road leading to the Murchison home was called Murchison Crossing.

Duncan Murchison left the family home in North Carolina as a young man, moving first to Rabun County, Georgia and then to Cass County, Georgia (now Bartow). He was fortunate to have received a land grant in 1832 of 267 acres along the Etowah River just west of what would become Kingston, Georgia. There he established his home, marrying Susan Snow in 1836. Duncan proved a successful farmer who also served as an engineer on the Rome Railroad as did his son, John. The book, “In and Out of the Lines” by Francis Thomas Howard, originally published in 1905 and reprinted by the Etowah Valley Historical Society in 1997, highlights the exploits of the two Murchison daughters who defied Union occupation forces and were exiled northward to a Kentucky prison camp, with only one to survive the trip home following the war. Duncan and Susan were both buried on the family farm.

Source: Bartow County Georgia Heritage Book, Vol. II, compiled by the Bartow County Genealogical Society, Cartersville, Georgia, page 144.