JACKSON HISTORY: Jackson’s worst criminal

Editor’s note: This story includes a description of an act of murder and treatment of slaves before the Civil War that may be difficult for some readers.

I hesitated to tell this story because it is terrible. There are few stories like this one. 

It all began when a Methodist preacher in Middle Tennessee fathered a son who was named John A. Murrell who was born in 1804. Apparently, his mother was not a good person and taught her son to steal at about the same time as he learned to walk. 

John adopted “robbery” as a profession early on in his life and was charged several times with various crimes. Some of these crimes included gaming, creating riots and horse thievery. 

Stealing someone’s horse was a serious violation and the punishment was rather unique back then. Our worst criminal was flogged with a whip until he bled and then the judge ordered his hands to be branded with the initials “H.T.” which would let anyone who didn’t know him realize he was a Horse Thief. 

This was in Williamson County. After being branded, he was whipped and placed in the public pillory. A public pillory is what some people may remember as the wooden rack style thing that the person’s head and hands were locked in mostly at court squares. (Emma Inman Williams, Historic Madison, 1986)

Remember his father was a Methodist preacher. John Murrell was taught by his father how to give sermons and used to preach on occasions. Eventually Murrell made Madison County his base of operations.  One such sermon was given at the Presbyterian Church in Denmark in Western Madison County. While he preached inside the church, Murrell had several henchmen to steal the horses that were “parked” outside. They took those horses to Kentucky and eventually sold them when they thought it was safe to do so. 

Now to when things got bad. He began stealing slaves. Remember this was way before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. He would steal a slave, tell the slave that he would resell them and split the profit with said slave and eventually release them to the North, where they could hope to gain their freedom. 

But that isn’t what he really did. He stole a slave, resold them to another plantation, then after a few months, he would steal them again. Eventually word got out amongst the population, and they were running notices in the papers warning people about buying certain slaves. 

Once this happened, Murrell would kill the slave and disembowel the body and dispose of it in a creek or river by filling it up with rocks. He was arrested in Alabama in 1834 and transferred to Jackson to stand trial for murder and stealing slaves. 

As mentioned before, this was way back in the early 19th Century, and the mindsets were very different than those of today. We have come a long way since then, but in those days, people were not enlightened very much; there was a Civil War to be fought decades later. 

During his trial, the jury came back with a guilty verdict for stealing slaves, but he was exonerated of murder. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor and sent to the penitentiary. 

Once he served the 10 years, he was released and he became a blacksmith in Middle Tennessee and died a short time later. Even today, there are people looking for buried treasure they believe Murrell hid away. (Tales of Madison, Harbert Alexander, 2002). 

I believe that it is important to remember history, so we don’t tend to repeat the mistakes of the past. It is interesting to realize how much things have changed over the last couple of centuries. I wonder what the next couple of centuries will bring.