[2][3][4][5] Timothy Murphy (1800–1853 ) born in County Wexford, Ireland worked at the Lima branch of the Hartnell and Company meatpacking house in 1828.
Timothy Murphy suffered a reversal of fortune in 1849 when he was swindled out of the proceeds from the sale of meat from his ranch, by John B. Steinberger.
[6] With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored.
[9] Irishman, James Miller (-1890) and his wife, Mary Murphy, came overland to California in 1844 with the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party and in 1846 he purchased 680 acres (2.8 km2) of the Rancho Las Gallinas purchased from Timoteo Murphy and operated it as a beef ranch and then as a dairy farm.
He married Maria Sweetman in 1855, and in 1856 moved to the ranch opposite the James Miller, where he built a home, and continued grazing cattle.