The Morphy and Le Carpentier Families
These photographs show the main adults in the Morphy clan. No remaining photographs appear to survive of Paul's two sisters, Helena and Malvina. Charles Maurian remained his close friend and family associate for life.
Paul's heritage came from his Spanish ancestry on his father's side, bequeathing the name Morphy, and his mother's French name Le Carpentier. Paul's great-grandfather was Michael Murphy, an Irishman. The name Murphy was then changed to Morphy by his son, Paul's grandfather, Diego Morphy, in Malaga, Spain.
The Le Carpentier name was made notorious by Paul's maternal grandfather Joseph Le Carpentier, who not only owned slaves in the French Creole tradition, but bought and sold them as an "auctioneer" as well as trading with sometime friend, sometime enemy of the French Quarter, the pirate Jean Lafitte.
Paul Morphy, chess player, world champion