Pendleton Murrah was born in 1824 in South Carolina. He was a governor of Texas during the American Civil War.

Murrah graduated from Brown University in 1848, before opening his own law practice in Marshall, Texas. He ran and was defeated for the US Congress before winning the gubernatorial race in 1863. He fled to Mexico in May of 1865, after the end of the American Civil War. The trip was too much for his already fragile health and he died a few days latter. He is the only Texas governor whose burial place in unknown.