John Murrell (bandit)

John A. Murrell
John A. Murrell, with a boyish face, in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, Nashville, from the only known, accurate portrait, of Murrell, made during his lifetime.
Born	John Andrews Murrell 1806 Lunenburg County, Virginia
Died	November 21, 1844 (aged 38) Pikeville, Bledsoe County, Tennessee
Cause of death	pulmonary consumption (tuberculosis)
Resting place	Smyrna First Methodist Church Cemetery, Smyrna, Rutherford County, Tennessee
Nationality	American
Other names	John A. Murrell, Murel, Murrel, Great Western Land Pirate
Occupation	bandit, horse thief, slave stealer, burglar, camp meeting preacher, counterfeiter, river pirate, criminal gang leader, convict, carpenter, blacksmith
Known for	Alleged, criminal mastermind behind the 1835 Murrell Slave Insurrection Conspiracy or "Murrell Excitement"
Movement	Mystic Clan, Mystic Confederacy
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Mangham
Children	John A. Murrell (son), Arthusy Murrell (daughter)
Parent(s)	Jeffrey Murrell and Zilpha Andrews

John Andrews Murrell also, known as John A. Murrell and commonly spelled as Murel and Murrel (1806 - November 21, 1844) was a near-legendary bandit and supposed criminal mastermind, operating in the United States, along the Mississippi River, in the early-mid-nineteenth century. John Murrell had his first criminal conviction, for horse theft, as a teenager and was branded with an "HT", flogged, and sentenced to six years in prison, being 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, Nashville, modeled after the 1820s Auburn penal system, from 1834 to 1844.

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, an honest man and Zilpha Andrews and the third born of eight children. When incarcerated, his mother, wife and two children lived in the vicinity of Denmark, Tennessee.

While in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, John Murrell, as part of his reform, was required to work and learned the blacksmith trade. A decade in prison, starting in 1834, under the Auburn penitentiary system, of mandatory convict regimentation, through prison uniforms, lockstep, silence, and occasional solitary confinement, broke Murrell mentally and supposedly left him an imbecile. He spent the last months of his life, as a blacksmith in Pikeville, Bledsoe County, Tennessee. The Nashville Daily American newspaper mentioned a different account, of his last year of life, that, upon his release from prison, at 38 years old, he became a reformed man, a Methodist in good standing, was a carpenter by trade, boarding at the house of John M. Billingsly, of Pikeville