Named for the Murphree family, who settled it - Daniel Murphree (1781-1851) came to Blount County in 1817, and his father Solomon Murphree followed by 1820. Per George Powell’s 1855 “History of Blount County,” it was “the largest and most important of the valleys of Blount County,” with iron ore, limestone, fire stone, and a coal bed all within a half mile of each other. It was also a real religious center - Mount Moriah, the county’s first Baptist church, was organized there in 1819.
In the spring of 1821, Rev. Lockhart established a Cumberland Presbyterian church in the valley, and another the same year at what became the Summit Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Appears in: Blount Springs.
Who the valley is named for is genuinely contested, and the sources split by date. The earliest account is George Powell’s History of Blount County of 1855, written within four years of Daniel’s death: “Dan’l. Murphree gave his name to this valley.” Against that, the Murphree family’s own tradition names Solomon - stated by his great-grandson Jasper E. Bynum in 1916, and again in the Solomon Murphree family Bible as transcribed in 1948, which says plainly that “Murphree’s Valley is named for him.” Genealogist Robert W. Baird, the most thorough modern researcher of this family, declines to settle it, writing only that the valley “is said to have been named for Solomon.” This site records both rather than choosing.