John Murrell (bandit) - Disputed Claims

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.

• His place and date of birth are 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. He is claimed to have been born in 1791. 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.

• The location of his hideout and operations base is debated. 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, 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.

• Some say he began to plot his takeover of New Orleans in 1841, although 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; 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 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.

• John is known to be related to residents of Hattiesburg, Mississippi such as Isaac Thomas, Lou Thomas, Zach Thomas, and Alex Thomas.