John Murrell (bandit)

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The tumultuous history of John Murrell (also spelled as Murel and Murrel), a legendary bandit operating in the United States along the Mississippi River in the mid-1800s, is almost in as much confusion as his name.

1 Accepted claims
2 Disputed claims
3 Modern appearances
4 The sources of confusion
5 Sources
6 External links

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Accepted claims

Here are some general facts that are accepted about his life:

He stole horses, and at least once was caught with a freed slave living on his property. He was sentenced to ten years in a Tennessee prison for horse-stealing.

Murrell was one of three brothers who were known to be petty thieves. Their father was a Methodist circuit preacher.

A young man named Virgil Stewart, in 1835, wrote a fictitious account of the history of John Murrell called "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 Hundered 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."

Stewart wrote this so-called "confession of John Murrell" under the pseudonym of "Augustus Q. Walton, Esq.," for whom he invented a fictitious background and profession.

Historians generally believe that Stewart's pamphlet was largely fictional, and that Murrell (and his brothers) were at best inept thieves, having bankrupted their father over the years for bail money. (Proving that, far from being a criminal mastermind, Murrell was caught and jailed quite often.)

After Murrell died nine months after leaving prison, parts of him were dug up and stolen like icons. His skull is still missing, but one of his thumbs is still in the possession of the Tennessee State Museum.

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Disputed claims

The following claims were originally derived from Stewart's "History of the Detection, Conviction, Life, and Designs of John A. Murel...." (see above):

He was known as a 'land-pirate,' using the Mississippi River as a base for his operations. He used a network of anywhere from 300 (Stewart estimate) to 1,000 (as quoted in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi) to 2,500 (as some newspaper reports claimed) fellow bandits collectively known as the Mystic Clan to pull off his escapades. Many of these were members of cultural/ethnic groups such as the Melungeons and the Redbones. He was also known as a bushwhacker along the Natchez Trace.

To cover up his misdeeds, he played the persona of a traveling preacher. Twain's work and others say he would preach to a congregation while his gang stole the horses outside. However, the accounts are unanimous that Murrell's horse was always left behind.

Just before he was apprehended, he was about to spearhead a slave revolt in New Orleans in an attempt to take over the city and install himself as a sort of potentate of Louisiana.

The disputed details about Murrell are more numerous and controversial than the known facts. Even today, his place of birth is in question: Some sources claim Williamson County, Tennessee, others say Jackson, Tennessee. In any case, it is clear that he grew up in Williamson County, Tennessee, just south of Franklin.

Even more in debate is the location of his hideout and operations base. Once again, Jackson or Madison County are bandied about, but other places include Natchez, Mississippi in an odd depression on a bluff called Devil's Punch Bowl, Tunica County, Mississippi, the Neutral Ground in Louisiana, and even the tiny Island 37, part of Tipton County, Tennessee. One record, a genealogical note,^[1] even places him as far east as Georgia; in fact Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett makes it clear there was a lawless district in that town named for him, "Murrell's Row" in the 1840s. Because Murrell has come to symbolize Natchez Trace lawlessness in the antebellum period, it's understandable that his "hideouts" (whether there were any hideouts or not) have been said to have been located at most of the well-known areas of particular lawlessness along the Natchez Trace.

Even the dates of his mythical escapades contradict themselves, a tell-tale sign that much, if not all of it, is hogwash. Some say he began to plot his takeover of New Orleans in 1841, which would be odd because he was in the sixth year of a ten year sentence in the prison at Nashville at the time, and Stewart had already published his account of Murrell's plot in 1835. Others say he was in operation from 1835 to 1857, which would be odder still because, again, he was in prison for ten of those years, and died of tuberculosis in 1845 shortly after leaving prison and taking up a quiet life as a born-again Christian and blacksmith.

A river feature in Chicot County, Arkansas called Whiskey Chute is named for his raid on a whiskey-carrying steamboat that was sunk after it was pillaged. It was named such in 1855. However, he is also claimed to have been born in 1791,^[2] which would make him a very aging pirate, to say the least. As with most of the dates associated with the mythical Murrell, this one is off the mark. We know from Record Group 25, "Prison Records for the Main Prison at Nashville, Tennessee, 1831-1922," that Murrell was born in 1806, most  likely in Williamson County, Tennessee.

[NOTE: Please read Penick's book, and consult the records in the Tennessee State Archives and the county courthouse in Franklin, Tennessee, if you intend to edit this entry. It's important, I think, to distinguish between the mythical Murrell and the historical Murrell, if people are to use this entry with any confidence. The mythical Murrell is fascinating and well worth study, but he wasn't real. Or, more accurately, the man was real and the legend a figment of the imagination.]

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Modern appearances

The Tennessee Historical Society has a traveling exhibit which features, among many other items, a preserved thumb which supposedly belonged to Murrell (although the veracity of this claim may be up to as much debate as that surrounding the Shroud of Turin.)

He was fictionalized in Episode 5 of Riverboat on U.S. television network NBC, and the episode first aired on October 11, 1959. In the show, he was a riverboat captain who planned to hijack another riverboat piloted by "Dan Simpson," and planned to do so by planting an alluring agent (played by Debra Paget) as a dancing girl on his vessel.

Sow the Seeds of Hemp, a 1976 novel by Gary Jennings, is a fictionalized account of the pursuit of John Murrell by Virgil Stewart, told from Stewart's point of view.

His escapades have also inspired numerous rumors about the location of his treasure. One claim is that it is buried in the Devil's Punch Bowl. Coin collectors say it is on Honey Island in Louisiana. (See external link below for details.)

To top it off, his ghost reportedly appears from time to time on the Natchez Trace. Once again, the Devil's Punch Bowl is said to be the site of the haunting of members of his gang.

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The sources of confusion

There are several possible explanations for the legends surrounding Murrell. One, of course, is the simple growth and popularity of legend in the South in the mid-1800s. Another is that John Murrell was a fairly common name—a contemporary lived in Louisiana near Lake Bistineau at the same time and was a landowner of some repute, although there is no evidence that they are the same person.^[3] A different note places another John Murrell as a settler along the Trail of Tears in Arkansas, once again, a contemporary.^[4]

Another possibility, so remote as to be preposterous, is that he and his influence was truly as widespread as Stewart claimed. Even at the lowest estimate of 1,000, his gang was numerous enough to cause havoc in a huge swath along the Mississippi.

We know for certain that John Murrell, the same John Murrell who Virgil Stewart helped apprehend and convict, lived and was active in the early 19th Century. An extraordinary amount of documentation, including court records contained at the courthouse in Franklin, Tennessee, make this indisputable. What kind of man he was, that's another question.

The only thing, then, that is certain about the life of John Murrell is uncertainty.

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