Early History of Phillips County

The Land, the Legends and the Lore

by Patty Smith

Published 2020

There's Gold in Them Thar Hills

His name was John A. Murrell, born circa 1806 in Virginia, and raised in Tennessee as the third of eight children born to Rev. Jeffery Murrell and Zipha Andrews Murrell. As a teenager, he was arrested, flogged until he bled, branded with HT at the base of his thumb, and sent to prison for horse theiving. None of this deterred him, and he was soon to become the most notorious bandit of the southern states, often using the Mississippi River as his target of operations.

Newspapers of the time report that he had anywhere from 400 – 2500 members in his outfit, known as the Mystic Clan, with hideout locations that stretched from Natchez, to Louisiana to the once thriving village of Philips Bayou, located on the Low Road, north of the mouth of the St. Francis River. Mark Twain, in “Life on the Mississippi” wrote that Murrell was a much more impressive outlaw than Jesse James, calling his clan a “colossal combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro stealers and counterfeiters.” Murrell himself was referred to as the great western land pirate, and often called the Reverend Devil. As a charismatic, gifted speaker, he would wander into a village as a traveling preacher , hold a revival, and while preaching, his gang would steal all the horses of the congregation. He stole slaves and resold them, incited slave rebellions, murdered, robbed wagon trains as well as boats traveling the Mississippi River, and panicked many a settler and plantation owner when he was around.

According the “Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas”, by Goodspeed, John Murrell once made his home during his vigilante days in what is now Lee County, at a place known as Lone Pine. Supposedly there was only a single pine tree in the area, and one wonders if this locale is what we now call Lone Pine Campground by Bear Creek Lake. It was, however, at Phillips Bayou where his gang awaited the soon to be robbed boats traversing the Mississippi River. According to Mary Lou Hannon, who taught school in Helena, and lived at Phillips Bayou, Murrell and a part of his Mystic Clan “watched from a high point on the ridge at Phillips Bayou”. “When a boat approached, they pirated it, often killing members on board.” “It has been said that this high point on the ridge is on the left side, on the road that connects the Low Road to the High Road at Phillips Bayou”. If one travels this connecting road, it is easy to see the highest point on the ridge, nearest the river. Ms. Hannon states that many forays and council meetings of Murrell were held at Phillips Bayou, and that the “spoils” of robberies were often divided in this exact location.

John Murrell was finally captured thanks to a man by the name of Virgil Stewart, who infiltrated the clan and gained the trust of Murrell. In 1834, Stewart accused him of murder, but he was arrested instead for the theft of Negros, and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Stewart was forced to leave the South, as he was the object of numerous assassination attempts, assumingly by men of Murrell’s clan. Murrell was released in 1844, and died shortly thereafter from pulmonary consumption (tuberculosis). He confessed on his deathbed to every misdeed, with the exception of murder, and he never had the opportunity to recover his supposedly vast collection of gold. Mary Lou Hannon, in the Phillips County Historical Quarterly, Volume 13, #2, calls Murrell’s Hill a landmark, and stated that “on one side of the hill is a large cave, and on its top is a deep hole and all around it are large holes. These holes were supposedly dug by people hunting for treasure”, Murrell’s treasure. If any gold was ever found, it has never been told. A skeleton was found in 1903, and ‘buttons with U.S. stamped on them indicating that soldiers camped there during the Civil War.’ “In 1908, a Negro woman who had lived there all her life asked the diggers to stop digging in a certain area as it was an old cemetery. It was thought that Confederate soldiers were buried there during the Civil War.” Perhaps they were confederate soldiers, or perhaps they were victims of Murrell.

Since the mid 1800’s, a favorite pastime of men and boys alike has been to search for the Murrell gold that was supposedly buried on the ridge at Phillips Bayou. Even as late as 2016, some who knew the story of the ‘devil preacher’, were searching, (to no avail I might add.) Locals from earlier years had reason to believe it was buried at Phillips Bayou rather than Lone Pine. According to Rickey Robertson, author of “The Robber John Murrell and his Famous Hideouts”, Murrell had eight different “banks” or hideouts where he stashed his hidden treasure. Phillips Bayou was definitely a hideout, but if the treasure is there, it has yet to be found.

Murrell’s gold is not the only treasure to be found in our hills. There were numerous plantations along the Low Road, from Helena to Bear Creek. With the onslaught of the Civil War, plantations owners buried their prized possessions. Gold, silver, jewelry and other items, some as large as gilded mirrors, were buried in those hills along the river. When the war began, and Helenians heard that Union troops were on the way, Amelia Sebastian, wife of Senator William K. Sebastian, of Helena, directed the slaves to bury the silver and other fineries. Confirmation that she did so comes from a January 23, 1870 article in the Memphis Daily Appeal. “We have been shown a letter from a gentleman of high character in Iowa, which states that he has discovered in the hands of an honest ex-Federal soldier, a quantity of silverware which he supposes to belong to the widow of W. K. Sebastian. The silverware was purchased from a negro, who is supposed to have stolen it, and it is now in this gentleman’s hands, ready to be delivered on the proper measures being taken and proofs made. This is written in the hope it may meet the eye of Sebastian, or his widow, or friends of either. Other papers will do well to give currency to this information.” A similar notice appeared in the March 13, 1870 edition of this same paper. After Helena was captured by Union forces, and the death of his wife, Amelia Dunn Sebastian, and daughter, Sarah Amelia Sebastian, Sebastian moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and practiced law there until his death on May 20, 1865. (Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture) One has to wonder how much of those treasures buried by the plantation owners remain buried in the hills of Crowley’s Ridge.

There have also been reports of two, and possibly three cannons found, one west of the ridge, close to the old Lederman Hunting Club, and another on the east side of the ridge between the Low Road and High Road close to Porter Lake. M J Lederman saw one of these cannons as a young boy, and remembers that the wheels were buried under mud. The report of the third cannon is pending verification. Neither of those cannons was ever reported as recovered, nor the third, if indeed it existed.

While the ‘hills are alive with the sound of music’ from nature, those hills are also alive with treasures of the past, just waiting to be uncovered from years of mud and moss. (The next “Reflections of the Past” will give more details, with a map, of the location of the cannon assumed to be from Colonel Dobbins bivouac area.)

Please note it is illegal to take objects found from the Mississippi River State Park, or the St. Francis National Forest. Should you ever run across any such treasures, please contact the proper authorities.

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Primary sources for these articles include the Phillips County Historical Quarterlies, Shinn's Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas; Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas; Down the Great River by Glazier; Arkansas Historical Documents and Land Grants; The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture; Courts and Lawyers on the Arkansas Frontier; Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi; USGenWeb; Ancestry.com; FamilySearch.org; Phillips DNA Project.