 In 1895, the company suffered a major setback as the entire town burned, suffering $400,000 in losses ($8,000,000 in today's terms).By that time, Simon J. Murphy, Sr. a Detroit business man and one of its first millionaires had consolidated his millions from Detroit and Southern California into PL.The Simon Murphy family, Stanwood Murphy and his direct descendants would be the controllers of the company for nearly a century The way they took care of business was shown handily after the big fire as they chose to rebuild everything, despite the fact that insurance covered only 25% of losses.