Robert Murray was born on December 25, 1832, in Earltown, Colchester County, Nova Scotia.
He was an editor and author. In 1857, he graduated from the Old Free Church College in Halifax and was appointed editor of The Presbyterian Witness and Evangelical Advocate of Halifax in 1855. In 1858, he received a licence to preach from the Free Church of Nova Scotia, but he was not ordained a minister. Between 1861 and 1875 he was also editor of the monthly Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church of the Lower Provinces of British North America. He also contributed a series of amusing portraits of Nova Scotia politicians and numerous articles from his journeys across Canada and abroad, and on various literary, social, economic, and scientific subjects. He was secretary for the Halifax Evangelical Alliance, an advocate of the free common school system in Nova Scotia, and one of the early members of the Dalhousie University Board of Governors, receiving an honorary LL.D. from Dalhousie in 1902. Murray was also a poet. He wrote the hymn "From Ocean Unto Ocean" as well as a Canadian stanza to "God Save the Queen".
In 1867, he married Elizabeth Carey (1835–1920). He died on December 12, 1910, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.