TERROR IN TENNESSEE:
JOHN A. MURRELL,
THE GREAT WESTERN LAND PIRATE
‘Cumberland Tales’
Herald-Citizen, Cookeville, TN:
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Through largely forgotten today, stories of the savagery committed by John A. Murrell and his gang
gripped the imagination of people on the Tennessee frontier in the early nineteenth century. Contemporary
sources contradict themselves and the Murrell legend grew in wild proportions while he cooled his heels in
the state penitentiary at Nashville. As recently as
2002, Lowell Kirk of the Tellico Times deemed
Murrell the “Osama bin Laden” of Jacksonian
America, while Robert Coates, writing in the 1930s,
considered him the greatest criminal mastermind of
antebellum America –a true life villain on the par of
Sherlock Holmes shadowy nemesis Professor
Moriarty. Stories abounded of wanton murder,
horse theft, orgiastic sex, ritualistic killings,
disemboweling victims and filling their empty
cavities with rocks to more easily sink the carcasses
in rivers, and his intention to foment a huge slave
insurrection in the immediate aftermath of the Nat
Turner Rebellion. Murrell’s escapades inspired fear
and awe, and provided fodder for a number of
authors including William Gilmore Simms, Mark
Twain, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges, Gary Jennins and many more. More recently
Murrell was featured as a villain in early television series such as Steamboat, The Adventures of Jim Bowie
and in Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett and the River Pirates. Trying to separate fact from fiction in the life of
John A. Merrill is more than a little vexing, and his story is truly a shining example of the “Liberty Valance
Syndrome”–if the legend is more interesting than the truth, print the legend.
John A. Murrell was born in Columbia, Tenn., in 1804 to Joseph and Zilphia Murrell. His father was a
circuit riding Methodist minister and his mother ran an inn. By all accounts his father was a fine,
upstanding man of sterling reputation. The same could not be said of his mother who was “a coarse and
immodest woman, and in addition to setting an example of licentiousness, she, according to the confession
of her son, even taught him to steal… John A. Murrell may be said to have drawn his barbarous and vicious
nature from his mother’s breast.” Verne Marsh, a distant relative of Murrell’s depicted Joseph as weak and
totally in the thrall of his debauched wife. “Preacher Murrell, it was said,”left his wife to preach the gospel
fearful that otherwise he “would be after her like a boar during the rutting season.” When home he tried to
“break her of walking as she did, hips swinging and breasts undulating and her long thighs molding
themselves against her skirt with each step.” As soon as Joseph was off to save souls, Zilphia transformed
their inn into a brothel, and instructed her son John to rifle through her guest’s belongings and steal
valuable while she entertained the stranger in her bed. One author described Zilphia as a depraved female
Fagin.
John A. Murrell was a quick study and an adept thief. An avid reader and a decent actor, he lived by his
wits and his charm. By age 16, he was so proficient that he took off to Nashville to embark in a life of
crime that focused on horse and slave theft. He was arrested for the first time in 1823 for inciting a riot in
Murfreesboro and fined 50cents for the disturbance. In 1825, authorities arrested him for gambling and for
stealing the black mare of a widow in Franklin. He was able to secure a change of venue to Davidson
County by claiming that the citizens of Williamson County were prejudiced against him. The change of
venue did him little good, for he was found guilty and sentenced to one year in the recently completed state
penitentiary, after receiving 39 lashes on his bare back and having his thumbs branded. C. W. Nance, a
young man at the time of the trial, remembered the sensation the trail caused and he witnessed Murrell’s
punishment. Nance described the event to Douglas Anderson: “The courtroom was crowded and the judge
was seated on a high seat surrounded by a hand railing with the prisoner’s box nearby. John Murrell,
handsomely dressed, but quite unconcerned was conduced to the prisoner’s box and instructed to lay his
hand on the railing while the sheriff took form his pocket a piece of new hemp and bound Murrell’s hand
securely to the railing. In a short while a big negro named Jeffery came in bringing a tinner’s stove that
looked like a lantern and placed it on the floor. Being anxious to see all that was going on, I climbed upon
the railing close to Murrell. Mr. Horton, the sheriff, took from the little stove the branding iron, a long
instrument, which looked very much like the soldering irons now used by tinner’s. He looked at the iron
which was red hot and then put it on Murrell’s hand. The skin fried like meat. Mr. Horton held it there
until the smoke rose probably two feet when he removed the iron. Murrell withstood the ordeal without
flinching. Mr. Horton then untied Murrell’s hand. Murrell, who had up to this time never moved,
produced a white handkerchief and wiped his hand several times.”
While in prison, Murrell though about his father’s profession and engaged in serious study of the scriptures
facility. He studied the Bible – not out of remorse for his crimes and absolution –but for schemes to part
good people from their belongings.
When Murrell emerged from prison in 1826, he was determined to renew his life of crime on a grander
scale, and he avidly pursued his profession until 1834 when he was convicted of stealing slaves. Those
eight years proved exciting as Murrell’s reputation as a land pirate grew. He preferred to operate along the
Natchez Trace between Nashville and Natchez, Miss., preying on
weary travelers as the journeyed along. The trace earned a terrible
reputation and sojourners traveled at their own peril. Sometimes he
worked alone; other time he teamed up with other professional
criminals. After particularly good heists, Murrell often traveled to the
wide-open city of New Orleans to fence the stolen property and spend
time in Mother Surgick’s notorious bordello, where he drank profusely
and sated his passion. While he focused on horse theft, Murrell found
stealing slaves more profitable. Planters offered hefty rewards for
runaway slaves, and Murrell often engineered the kidnapping of
various slaves only to sell them back tot their grateful masters. It is
rumored that he sold one slave back to his master four times before he
finally took him to Cincinnati and set him free after all the profit he
afforded Murrell.
Preaching was profitable, too. Frontier Tennesseans in the main had
less education than Murrell, and his charismatic bearing and
knowledge of the scriptures beguiled many a congregation. Using
forged papers from a Methodist Bishop, he claimed authority to speak
in churches in rural Middle and West Tennessee. He often “worked a
congregation into a later,”and in the era of the Second Great Awakening where “exercise”were common,
ecstatic worshipers fell into paroxysms referred to as the “jerks” or other outward expressions of divine
intervention. Sources differ on how he profited from his time in the pulpit; some say he took up love
offerings from thankful congregations while other claim that while he was preaching his partners were
busily rifling through carriages and saddlebags for valuables.
Apprehended in 1834 for harboring fugitive slaves, Murrell was convicted of slave stealing in Jackson,
Tenn., and confined to the state penitentiary for 10 years of hard labor. During his trial a shady character
named Virgil A. Stewart provided the state’s only testimony against Murrell. Stewart depicted a demon,
motivated by blood lust and wanton destruction. It was Stewart who claimed that Murrell wanted to arm
slaves and have them rise up against their white masters so that Murrell and his “Mystic Confederacy”
could create a new nation. He described a number of murders, all of which Murrell flatly denied. While he
gladly admitted to being a thief, he bristled at accusations of murder, and like Butch Cassidy decades later,
was proud of never having killed anyone in the pursuit of his livelihood.
Prison records note that John A. Murrell was received in the Penitentiary Aug. 17, 1834: “he is five feet 10
inches and a half in height and weights from 150-to-180; dark hair, blue eyes, long nose and much pitted
with small pox; tolerably fair complexion; 28 years of age.” While in prison Murrell learned the crafts of
blacksmithing and carpentry and was a model prisoner. The celebrity surrounding Murrell made him the
subject of many investigations while incarcerated. Professor O. S. Fowler, a Phrenologist, examined
Murrell at the state prison in 1835 and found him to be a superior intellect. Murrell returned to his studies
of the law and the Bible and was released nine months early for good behavior.
Rather than return to his old life along the Natchez Trace, he chose to move to the Upper Cumberland
where, he hoped, he would have less notoriety. He found work as a carpenter in Sparta and took up
residence near the White County-Van Buren County line. Murrell plied his trade as a carpenter/blacksmith
in Bledsoe, White and Van Buren counties. The Sparta Index reported “it is not generally known that John
Murrell reformed before his death and lived for several years a member of the Methodist Church in good
standing.” He purportedly left his sizable library to Burritt College at Spencer upon his death.
Whether he reformed or not is subject to debate. Shortly after he died of pulmonary problems, he was
buried in an unmarked grave near Pikeville in the Nine Mile community. According to Assistant District
Attorney Caroline Knight tradition has it that Murrell was buried face down with his head pointed west so
that on the day of judgment he would be staring straight into the mouth of hell and his future in the
afterlife. Murrell’s grave, though long unmarked, was vandalized and his head decapitated. Rumors
abound about what happened to it. One of his branded thumbs was also severed and on display at the state
museum for years. Some say that Murrell’s ghost roams along the ridges and valleys of Bledsoe, Van
Buren and White counties in search of his missing head and creating mayhem and terror to this day.
“Cumberland Tales”created by Calvin Dickinson and Michael Birdwell, and sponsored by the Cookeville
History Museum, welcomes any tale of this region’s history. For more information, contact Calvin
Dickinson at [email protected] and Michael Birdwell at [email protected]
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