Harold Hale Murchie was born on March 8, 1888 in Calais, Maine, the son of George A. Murchie, a lumber dealer and mill owner. Educated in the public schools of Calais, he was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1909 and received an LL.B. from Harvard University in 1912.
Admitted to the Maine Bar in that same year, he opened his law practice in Augusta before moving his office to Calais in 1914 where he maintained an active practice until 1940.
An Assistant Attorney General from 1913 to 1914, Murchie was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1919. He served as County Attorney for Washington County in 1925, 1926 and 1927 before being elected to the Maine State Senate in 1929, 1931 and 1933, serving as President of that body in his last term.
In 1940 he was appointed an Associate Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and in 1949 was named Chief Justice, a post which he held until the end of his life. President of the Maine Bar Association in 1938-39, Murchie was general counsel for the Bangor Hydro-Electric Company from 1933 to 1940 and from 1933 until his death was a director of that company.
He also was general counsel for the Eastern Manufacturing Company and a director of the Maine Central Railroad.
Murchie died in Calais, Maine on March 7, 1953, one day short of his sixty-fifth birthday.