The bulk of this collection consists of 427 photographic "Philippine Views" in the form of sepia prints mounted in two albums and listed in an accompanying booklet by the publisher, the Photo Supply Company of Manila. According to an inscription on the booklet, Belle Murphy acquired these views of the people and scenes of the Philippines in 1912, a year when she was teaching at Rizal High School in the Philippines. Various Philippine newspaper clippings found in the albums also date from 1912. A world map of steamship lines also present was published in 1914, by which year she was teaching in Manila High School.

The daughter of J.C. and Agnes Murphy of Lafayette County, Missouri, Muprhy had traveled to the Philippines by steamship as early as 1909. While back in the United States in 1916, she stopped to see her aunt, Mrs. B.C. Murphy, in Lawrence, KS. The presence of a train ticket stub from the Electric Traction Company of Hong Kong suggests that she also visited there. When she died in the Philippines in 1939, notable landmarks of her career in education were her tenure from 1920 to 1933 as Principal of the Manila Business School followed by a faculty position at the Philippine Normal School. Her death in Manila on August 26, 1939 was remembered by the parish Woman's Auxiliary, who donated a kneeling stool to the Cathedral in her memory.