John_Murrell_(bandit)

John Murrell (bandit)

John Murrell (bandit)

American criminal

John Andrews Murrell (1806 – November 21, 1844), the "Great Western Land Pirate", was a 19th-century bandit and criminal operating along the Natchez Trace and Mississippi River, in the southern United States. He was also known as John A. Murrell, and his surname was commonly spelled as Murel and Murrel. His exploits were widely known, and he became a legendary figure in fiction, film and television in the 20th century.

Quick Facts Born, Died ...
Quick Facts Founded by, Years active ...
No known accurate portrait of John A. Murrell from life exists of him in his later years. From an artist's interpretation of his older physical appearance found in historical records.
Murell grave at Smyrna, Tennessee
The hanging of five gamblers in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1835 was in response to the rising regulator activity against criminals in the region following the arrest of Murrell known as the "Murrell Excitement"

He was first convicted as a youth for the crime of horse theft. He was branded with an "HT", flogged, and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 1829. Murrell was convicted the second and last time for the crime of slave stealing, in the Circuit Court of Madison County, Tennessee. He was incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville from 1834 to 1844.[4]

Early life

According to Tennessee prison records, John Andrews Murrell was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia, and raised in Williamson County, Tennessee. Murrell was the son of Jeffrey Murrell and Zilpha Andrews, and was the third born of eight children. While he was incarcerated in Nashville for slave stealing, his mother, wife, and two children lived in the vicinity of Denmark, Tennessee.

Punishment and imprisonment

John A. Murrell had his first criminal conviction, for horse theft, as a teenager and was branded on the base of his thumb with an "HT" for horse thief, flogged, and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 1829. Murrell was convicted a second and final time, for the crime of slave stealing, in the Circuit Court of Madison County, Tennessee, and incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville from 1834 to 1844.[4] While in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, Murrell, as part of his reform, was required to work as a blacksmith. A decade in prison under the Auburn penitentiary system, of mandatory convict regimentation, through prison uniforms, lockstep, silence, and occasional solitary confinement, were said to break Murrell mentally and supposedly left him an imbecile. He spent the last months of his life as a blacksmith in Pikeville, Tennessee.

The Nashville Daily American newspaper reported a different account of his last year of life. It said that when Murrell was released from prison, at 38 years old, he became a reformed man, and a Methodist in good standing. He worked as a carpenter by trade, and lived at a boarding house in Pikeville.[5]

Death

In a deathbed confession, Murrell admitted to being guilty of most of the crimes charged against him except murder, to which he claimed to be "guiltless".[6] John A. Murrell died on November 21, 1844, nine months after leaving prison. He was reported to have contracted "pulmonary consumption" (tuberculosis). Murrell was interred at Smyrna First United Methodist Church Cemetery, in Smyrna, Tennessee. After Murrell died, parts of him were dug up and stolen by grave robbers. Although the corpse had been half-eaten by scavenging hogs, the head was separated from the torso, pickled, and displayed at county fairs.[7] His skull is missing, but the Tennessee State Museum holds one of his thumbs.[8]

Accepted claims

Accepted facts about his life include stealing horses, for which he was branded. He was also caught with a freed slave living on his property. Murrell was known to kidnap slaves and sell them to other slave owners. His 10-year prison sentence was for slave-stealing.[9] Murrell would be considered a conductor on the Reverse Underground Railroad. He is also suspected to have been involved in counterfeiting in Arkansas[10]His claims of being part of a "Mystic Clan" resulted in over 50 white men and a number of African Americans to be either hanged or whipped and banished in Western Mississippi.[11]

"The Murrell Excitement"

In 1835, Virgil Stewart wrote that a slave rebellion was being organized by highwaymen and Northern abolitionists. On Christmas Day, 1835, Murrell and his "Mystic Clan" planned to incite an uprising in every slaveholding state by invoking the Haitian Revolution, the most successful slave rebellion in history.[12] Murrell believed that a slave rebellion would enable him to take over the South, and make New Orleans the center of operations of his criminal empire.

Stewart's account of his interactions with Murrell was published as a pamphlet,[12] written under the pseudonym "Augustus Q. Walton, Esq.," for whom Stewart invented a fictitious background and profession. The validity of the pamphlet has been debated since its publication. Some historians say that Stewart's pamphlet was largely fictional and that Murrell (and his brothers) were at best inept thieves, who had caused their father to go bankrupt as he raised bail money for them.

Given Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831 in Virginia, slaveholders were always ready to believe conspiracies of new violence, especially in the Deep South where whites were far outnumbered by blacks. Those aroused by the pamphlet became part of increasing tensions and outbreaks known as the "Murrell Excitement". During this time, tension between the races and between locals and outsiders increased. On July 4, 1835, disturbances occurred in the red-light districts of Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, and Natchez, Mississippi. 20 slaves and 10 white men were hanged after confessing (under torture and coercion) to complicity in Murrell's plot.

On July 6 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, an angry mob decided to expel all professional gamblers from the town, based on a rumor that gamblers were part of the plot. When the gamblers resisted, the mob lynched five of them by hanging.[13] Similar panic surrounding Murrell and his conspiracy spread throughout the South long after his death, with cities from Huntsville, Alabama, to New Orleans, Louisiana, creating committees dedicated to identifying Murrell's conspirators and potential signs of slave rebellion.[14]

Disputed claims

Murrell was known as a "land-pirate", using the Mississippi River as a base for his operations. He used a network of 300[15] to 1,000,[16] and even as many as 2,500 (as some newspaper reports claimed) fellow bandits collectively known as the Mystic Clan to pull off his escapades. Many of his followers were believed to be members of mixed-race groups known as the Melungeons and Redbones. He was also known as a bushwhacker along the Natchez Trace.

Murrell posed as a traveling preacher. Twain and others wrote that he would preach to a congregation while his gang stole the horses outside, but they also said that Murrell's horse was always left behind. The location of his hideout and operations base has been debated. Possibilities were Jackson County, Tennessee; Natchez, Mississippi, at Devil's Punch Bowl; Tunica County, Mississippi; the Neutral Ground in Louisiana; and Island 37 on the Mississippi River. One record, a genealogical note,[17] places him as far east as Georgia. Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett wrote that a lawless district in that town was named for him in the 1840s, as "Murrell's Row". Because Murrell came to symbolize lawlessness along the Natchez Trace in the antebellum era, his "hideouts" (whether any hideouts existed or not) were said to be located at most of the well-known areas of such lawlessness along the Trace.

Stewart published his account of Murrell's plot in 1835. Just before Murrell was apprehended, he was rumored to be leading a slave revolt in New Orleans in an attempt to take over the city and become a sort of criminal potentate of Louisiana. Some say he began to plot his takeover of New Orleans in 1841, although he was then in the sixth year of a 10-year sentence in the prison at Nashville. Others say he operated as a criminal from 1835 to 1857. He was in prison for 10 of those years and died of tuberculosis in 1844 shortly after being released.

A stream in Chicot County, Arkansas, called Whiskey Chute, was named in 1855 for Murrell's raid on a whiskey-carrying steamboat that was sunk after it was pillaged.[18] From Record Group 25, "Prison Records for the Main Prison at Nashville, Tennessee, 1831-1922," Murrell was born in 1806, most likely in Williamson County, Tennessee.

See also

References

  1. [1]
    "Forging Southeastern Identities: Social Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and Folklore of the Mississippian to Early Historic South". Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. 2017. p. 214.
  2. [2]
    Stewart, Virgil A. (1836). "The history of Virgil A. Stewart: and his adventure in capturing and exposing the great "western land pirate" and his gang, in connexion with the evidence; also of the trials, confessions, and execution of a number of Murrell's associates in the state of Mississippi during the summer of 1835, and the execution of five professional gamblers by the citizens of Vicksburg, on the 6th July, 1835". New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. pp. 116–118.
  3. [3]
    Stewart, Virgil A. (1836). "The history of Virgil A. Stewart: and his adventure in capturing and exposing the great "western land pirate" and his gang, in connexion with the evidence; also of the trials, confessions, and execution of a number of Murrell's associates in the state of Mississippi during the summer of 1835, and the execution of five professional gamblers by the citizens of Vicksburg, on the 6th July, 1835". New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. p. 54.
  4. [4]
    "Inmates of the Tennessee State Penitentiary 1831-1850 Pt. 2: L - Z and Misc., Tennessee State Library and Archives". Archived from the original on 2017-01-26. Retrieved 2016-01-02.
  5. [5]
    "Interesting Facts about John A. Murrell", Nashville Daily American Newspaper, January 1, 1876.
  6. [6]
    "John A. Murrell". www.tellicotimes.com.
  7. [7]
    Wyatt-Brown,Southern Honor, p.45
  8. [8]
    Phillips, Betsy (October 24, 2011). "One Thumb Up! Severed 200-Year-Old Thumb Sticks Out at the Tennessee State Museum". Nashville Scene. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2013-09-17.
  9. [9]
    "The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: John Andrews Murrell 1806-1844".
  10. [10]
    Emcylopedia of Arkansas John Andrews Murrell
  11. [11]
    "The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: John Andrews Murrell 1806-1844".
  12. [12]
    "A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life And Designs of John A. Murel, The Great Western Land Pirate; Together With his System of Villany and Plan of Exciting a Negro Rebellion, and a Catalogue of the Names of Four Hundred and Forty-Five of His Mystic Clan Fellows and Followers and Their Efforts for the Destruction of Mr. Virgil A. Stewart, the Young Man Who Detected Him, to Which is Added Biographical Sketch of Mr. Virgil A. Stewart."
  13. [13]
    Rothman, Joshua D. (2008). "The Hazards of the Flush Times: Gambling, Mob Violence, and the Anxieties of America's Market Revolution". The Journal of American History. 95 (3): 651–677. doi:10.2307/27694375. JSTOR 27694375.
  14. [14]
    Rothman, Joshua (2012). Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. p. 271.
  15. [15]
    Stewart estimate
  16. [16]
    as quoted in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi
  17. [17]
    "Memoirs of R. C. HALLIBURTON of Hayneville, Houston County, Georgia". gagen.i-found-it.net. Archived from the original on June 14, 2006.
  18. [18]
    "Whiskey Chute - Lake Village, AR". Arkansas.com. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
  19. [19]
    The Essential Faulkner, Edited and with an introduction from Malcolm Cowley, Modern Library, 2012 Random House eBook Edition,p. 732.

Sources
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