by Karen L. Cox
14. H. Wells, “Crimson Crime at Glenburney Manor”; Z. Wells, Merrill Murder Mystery; Charles East, “Natchez Gothic,” in East Papers, LLMVC; Tidwell and Sanders, Sterling A. Brown’s “A Negro Looks at the South,” 358; Kane, Natchez on the Mississippi, 312–33; Callon and Smith, Goat Castle Murder; Llewelyn, Goat Castle Murder.
CHAPTER ONE
1. Cook, “Growing Up White, Genteel, and Female,” 312–20. Cook’s work focuses specifically on Natchez.
2. Details on Surgets and Merrills are from various sources including Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi, 430–31; Scarborough, Masters of the Big House, 11–12, 100; and Mansell, “Elms Court.”
3. According to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, Jennie was born in August 1863. Regarding Merrill’s slaveholdings, see U.S. Federal Census 1860 — Slave Schedules, Adams County; and Mansell, “Elms Court.”
4. Merrill’s visit is described in Mansell, “Elms Court.”
5. Marszalek, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 9:216.
6. “Letter from Natchez,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, February 17, 1864. The letter itself was written January 25, 1864.
7. The Merrills lived at 29 W. Washington Square in New York City. The firm of Goodman and Merrill is discussed in Scarborough, Masters of the Big House, 342. An 1866 advertisement for the firm of Goodman and Merrill is in Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 285. Walter Goodman’s father married Ayres Merrill Jr.’s aunt Anna Merrill. The dates of marriage and of Walter Goodman Jr.’s death in 1883 are located on the Find a Grave website, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=GOO&GSpartial=1&GSbyrel=all&GSst=45&GScntry=4&GSsr=3161&GRid=38977971&, accessed May 29, 2016.
8. The Newport, Rhode Island, City Directory lists Ayres Merrill for 1867–68; details on Harbor View are available from Miller, Lost Newport, 123.
9. St. Mary’s Hall is now the Doane Academy. Historical information on the Doane Academy can be found at “Doane Academy — Our History,” accessed May 29, 2016.
10. Several newspapers noted Merrill’s nomination, including, for example, the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, which reported his confirmation as Belgian ambassador on January 7, 1876.
11. Miscellaneous news clippings, October 11, 1877, Dicks Family Collection, HNF.
12. “The Beauties of America,” New York Sun, October 11, 1877.
13. Clippings on President and Mrs. Grant’s visit, Dicks Family Collection, HNF. See also Simon, Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant, 193, 209–10.
14. Pennsylvania, Passenger and Crew Lists, Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1800–1882, Roll M425, Line 7.
15. Notice of Merrill’s stroke appears in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 19, 1877. Boltwood, The History of Pittsfield, 23; New Jersey, Death and Burials Index, 1798–1971.
16. “King’s Daughters — History,” accessed July 14, 2015.
17. “125,000 King’s Daughters,” New York Sun, January 26, 1890, 1.
18. Clippings on Jennie Merrill’s reform work are found in Dicks Family Collection, HNF; Riis, How the Other Half Lives.
19. Miscellaneous newspapers clippings describe Merrill’s work on behalf of tenement reform in New York, found in Dicks Family Collection, HNF. There were also notices in the New York Evening World, March 1892, and the Pittsburgh Dispatch, March 24, 1892.
20. “A King’s Daughter Confers with Cardinal Gibbons about the Slums of New York,” Baltimore American (n.d.), in Dicks Family Collection, HNF.
21. Scarborough, Masters of the Big House, 22–26.
22. Walter Goodman to Jennie Merrill, letters dated October and December 1884 and January 1885, Dicks Family Collection, HNF.
23. Oakland, Adams County Historic Sites Subject Files, HNF.
24. The U.S. Federal Census for 1900 shows Duncan Minor was born in July 1863 and Jennie Merrill in August 1863.
25. Kate Minor’s testimony as well as that of Thomas Spain can be found in Petition of Katherine S. Minor, August 30, 1871, Records of the Southern Claims Commission, Records of the General Accounting Office, Record Group 217, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. See also Joyce Broussard, “Occupied Natchez, Elite Women, and the Feminization of the Civil War.”
26. Oakland, Adams County Historic Sites Subject Files, HNF; Mansell, “Oakland.”
27. Mansell, “Oakland.”
28. U.S. Federal Census data, 1860, 1880, 1900.
29. Duncan Minor to Jennie Merrill, 1883, Dicks Family Collection, HNF.
30. Ibid., letters dated 1883, 1885.
31. Ibid., November 3, 1889.
32. Ibid., April 24, 1900.
33. On details of the home and Merrill’s ownership, see “Glenburnie,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory.
34. E. C. Boyt, Jennie’s car mechanic, was quoted as saying that Natchez police knew of her penchant for running through stoplights but never gave her a ticket. “Slain Spinster’s Own Gun Sought as Death Weapon,” TP, August 11, 1932.
35. L. T. Kennedy to Duncan Minor, August 25, 1915, in Adams County Chancery Court Records, Case File 3195, HNF.
36. R. H. C. Dana by His Next Friend Miss Octavia Dockery, Complainant vs. Duncan Minor, Defendant, in ibid.
37. “R. H. C. Dana — An Alleged Lunatic, Final Decree,” February 6, 1917, Adams County Chancery Court Records, Book E, p. 470, HNF. According to the summary, a jury of six men concluded that Dana was “incapable of taking care of his property” and recommended the appointment of a guardian.
38. Details of her estate are drawn from testimony in Miss J. S. Merrill v. Miss Octavia Dockery, Mississippi Supreme Court, Series 208: Case Files, Case No. 21416, January 10, 1921, MDAH; and, “Glenburnie,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory.
39. Sheriff Mike Ryan’s testimony is found in Miss J. S. Merrill v. Miss Octavia Dockery, Mississippi Supreme Court, Case No. 21416. Ryan is the same man who served as Natchez’s chief of police during the Merrill murder investigation.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Miss J. S. Merrill v. Miss Octavia Dockery, Mississippi Supreme Court, Case No. 21416.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid. Quotation about Merrill holding a gun on hired hands is from Charles East’s interview notes with Natchez chief of police Charlie Bahin, March 17, 1977, East Papers, LLMVC.
48. Miss J. S. Merrill v. Miss Octavia Dockery, Mississippi Supreme Court, Case No. 21416.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Based on handwritten notes from East’s January 1974 interview with Odell Ferguson in Natchez, East Papers, LLMVC. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census confirms Odell Ferguson’s age.
2. On Charles A. Dana, see J. Wilson, Life of Charles A. Dana. Quote from Charles B. Dana to Richard H. C. Dana, May 27, 1890, Dana and Family Papers, LLMVC.
3. Information on Charles Backus Dana is found in General Catalogue of Dartmouth College, 12.
4. Copy of Charles B. Dana and Elvira Close marriage certificate, East Papers, LLMVC.
5. Dana’s report appears in Journal of the Thirty-Fifth Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 76.
6. “Battle of Port Gibson,” accessed August 26, 2014.
7. Journal of the Proceedings of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Mississippi Diocese, 26.
8. Elvira Dana died in February 1886; see Mississippi Wills and Probate Records. Her will shows that her son Richard was enrolled at Chamberlain-Hunt Academy in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Her executor was attorney T. Otis Baker, and, at her death, the estate was valued at $15,000. Charles B. Dana to Richard H. C. Dana, May 27, 1890, Dana and Family Papers, LLMVC.
9. Charles Dana, New York, Spanish-American War Military and Naval Service Records, 1898–1902.
10. Dana told a reporter that his finger was injured by a falling window in “Dana’s Life Filled with Tragedy and Futility,” TP, August 9, 1932.
11. R. H. C. Dan
a is listed as a boarder with Duncan Baker in the 1900 U.S. Federal Census. This is the same Baker of Baker-Grand Theatre. According to Charles East’s interview notes with Charlie Bahin, East Papers, LLMVC, Dana sometimes played piano to accompany silent films at the Baker-Grand Theatre.
12. Dick Dana’s handwritten diary speaks of Mr. Forman, Sadie, Nydia, and Octavia. Diary, 1906–1907, Dana and Family Papers, LLMVC.
13. Details on Thomas Dockery and family are found in the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Federal Censuses. See also Arey, “Thomas Pleasant Dockery, 1833–1898,” accessed May 29, 2016. Regarding the number of slaves Ann Dockery and Thomas Dockery owned, see U.S. Federal Census — Slave Schedules, 1860.
14. According to the website Measuring Worth, the amount of $75,000 in 1860 had a relative value of $2,170,000 in 2013.
15. U.S. Federal Census — Slave Schedules, 1860, Lamartine, Arkansas.
16. U.S. Federal Census, 1850 and 1860. Marriage to Laura West occurred in 1859, Coahoma County, Mississippi. The U.S. Census of 1860 shows Nydia was just five months old.
17. On Dockery’s role in the Civil War, see Arey, “Thomas Pleasant Dockery, 1833–1898,” accessed May 29, 2016.
18. Ibid. Laura Dockery’s death was recorded in the Daily Arkansas Democrat, September 15, 1880.
19. U.S. Federal Census, 1880, Coahoma County.
20. New York City Directory, 1888, lists Thomas Dockery’s occupation as a broker.
21. New England, United Methodist Church Records, 1787–1922, documents their marriage at Colchester Methodist Episcopal Church in New London, Connecticut, on April 25, 1883.
22. “Gen. Dockery on the War-Path,” NYT, March 22, 1884.
23. “Accused by His Wife,” ibid., March 23, 1884; “Mrs. Dockery in Hysterics,” ibid., March 24, 1884.
24. Octavia would later claim that her father was one of Grant’s pallbearers. There is no evidence this was the case.
25. “An Incident in Grant’s Career,” New York Evening World, August 7, 1885.
26. Letter to Thomas Dockery regarding Richard Forman’s appearance, Dockery Papers, MDAH.
27. Richard Reed to Octavia Dockery, May 9, 1889, ibid. Reed is listed as a lawyer on the U.S. Federal Census of 1900 for Adams County. By then, he had married someone else.
28. Richard Reed to Octavia Dockery, 1892, Dockery Papers, MDAH.
29. Ibid. Reed recognized his romantic efforts were not paying off, and he married the very next year.
30. Thomas Bulger to Octavia Dockery, June 23, 1896, and November 11, 1896, ibid.
31. Dockery, “Held by the Enemy.”
32. Dmitri, “So Red the Rose,” 19.
33. U.S. Census 1900 and 1910, Adams County.
34. U.S. Census 1910.
35. “Mrs. Richard H. Forman Buried,” ND, February 21, 1911, 6.
36. Sadie Foreman is shown as a renter at a house on Rankin Street in the Natchez, Mississippi, City Directory, 1912.
37. Diary, 1906–1907, Dana and Family Papers, LLMVC.
38. Octavia Dockery is listed as a boarder at a home on Pine Street in the Natchez, Mississippi, City Directory, 1912, 109.
39. Descriptions are drawn from Gwen Bristow’s reporting with the Times-Picayune in August 1932.
40. Re: Guardianship of R. H. C. Dana to the Chancery Court of Adams County, Mississippi, January term, 1919, Adams County Chancery Court Records, HNF. Chancellor R. W. Cutrer approved Mulvihill’s request to lease Glenwood to Dockery on March 29, 1919.
41. Ibid.
42. Dana’s beating of Octavia is discussed in “Inquiry in Natchez Shifted to Skunk’s Nest Area,” TP, August 14, 1932.
43. There were several accounts of Dana spending time outside on the estate. See, for example, “New Fingerprints of Dick Dana Are Being Compared,” ND, August 9, 1932.
44. Details of the history of the “Skunk’s Nest” are from “Will of Murdered Natchez Eccentric Gives All to Minor,” TP, August 12, 1932.
CHAPTER THREE
1. U.S. Federal Census, 1930, Summit Township, Chicago, records George Pearls’s birthplace as Mississippi and both parents as from Louisiana. On the Great Migration, see Wilkerson, Warmth of Other Suns.
2. On the domestic slave trade, see Deyle, Carry Me Back; Johnson, River of Dark Dreams; and Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told.
3. Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 40–41; Scarborough, Masters of the Big House, 3–9.
4. The names of Nellie’s mother and grandmother were revealed in a conversation with Emily Burns’s second cousins, specifically with Linda Griffin, Natchez, Miss., October 9, 2015.
5. U.S. Federal Census, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930; Natchez, Mississippi, City Directories, 1912, 1922, 1925, 1928. The names of Emily’s grandmother and great-grandmother are contained in the Smith family Bible.
6. On the movement of former slaves to urban areas, see Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 4–30.
7. Members of Emily’s family continue to worship at Antioch Baptist Church.
8. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps tell the story of St. Catherine Street, as do details from Natchez City Directories and U.S. Federal Census records.
9. Ibid.
10. Dolensky, “Natchez in 1920,” 24.
11. Sharpless, Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens, 65–88.
12. Emily’s marriage and address were culled from U.S. Federal Census data for 1920 and 1930, as well as from Natchez City Directories. Edward Burns is listed as her husband in the 1925 Natchez City Directory, 59.
13. The U.S. Federal Census of 1930 shows Newell as a boarder and an embalmer. The Natchez City Directory for 1928 lists him as employed by Bluff City Undertaking.
14. Emily’s name for Williams is confirmed in her signed confession, in which she refers to him as “Pink,” short for Pinkney. Burns Signed Confession, August 23,1932, East Papers, LLMVC.
15. Williams/Pearls’s height and weight are based on Maurice O’Neill’s notes on the case, which were transcribed by Charles East during his visit with O’Neill’s daughter, Marion Prevost. East Papers, LLMVC.
16. While Wells’s Master Detective series on the crime embellished some details about George Pearls, including that he was a “big burly Negro,” it accurately described many known details of the crime. According to the September 1933 issue, some of the items found in his trunk of belongings were letters from several women with whom there was romantic familiarity. H. Wells, “Crimson Crime at Glenburney Manor,” September 1933, 57.
17. Phillips, “Reconstruction in Mississippi,” accessed June 8, 2015; Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name, 27.
18. As quoted in McMillen, Dark Journey, 125.
19. “Samuel Thomas, Testimony before Congress, 1865,” https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/thomas.htm, accessed July 8, 2015.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Quote from Duncan Morgan, interview with author, Natchez, Mississippi, July 21, 2013.
23. Schroeder, “Summit, IL”; and M. Wilson, “Food Processing,” accessed August 11, 2015.
24. U.S. Federal Census of 1930 lists “George Pearls,” Summit Township, Cook County, Illinois. See also Schroeder, “Summit, IL.”
25. “Coroner Abandons Attempt to Reopen Inquest in Murder,” TP, August 11, 1932, reveals Pearls used to work for Minor.
26. Pearls’s letter to his wife transcribed by Charles East from Maurice O’Neill’s investigative notes, East Papers, LLMVC.
27. Minor quote from “Coroner Abandons Attempt to Reopen Inquest in Murder,” TP, August 11, 1932.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Evidence, including Emily Burns’s confession and a countersuit from Sheriff C. P. Roberts, places George Pearls at Glenwood earlier in the day of August 2, 1932.
2. Details of their movement that evening are drawn from Emily Burns’s confession, August 23, 1932, East Papers, LLMVC.
3. Details of that evening are drawn from Burns’s confession, as well as from newspaper accounts from both the Natchez Democrat and the T
imes-Picayune. The two papers covered the event very differently. The Times-Picayune reporters offered more detailed information, perhaps because the Natchez paper had to be careful in how it reported given the individuals involved. See “Woman Mysteriously Missing, Atrocious Murder Indicated,” ND, August 5, 1932, and “Bullet Riddled Body of Woman Found in Thicket,” ND, August 6, 1932; “Natchez Recluse Shot to Death in Natchez Home,” TP, August 6, 1932, and “Slaying Mystery Suspects Held Incommunicado While Fingerprints Are Studied,” TP, August 7, 1932. See also Burns confession, East Papers, LLMVC; and last, H. Wells, “Crimson Crime at Glenburney Manor,” September 1933, 57–58. Here, the story is told that they ran into Ed “Poe” Newell and that Pink convinced him to join them.
4. The Times-Picayune reported that local blacks who “still cling to their African voodoo belief” were the ones who had nicknamed Glenwood the “spooky mansion” and Dana and Dockery as the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman.” See “Natchez Recluse Shot to Death in Natchez Home,” TP, August 6, 1932. Regional and national media subsequently adopted these nicknames and perpetuated them in stories about Dana and Dockery.
5. Emily Burns’s formal confession statement, as entered into the court proceedings at her trial, speaks of Pink’s threat. East Papers, LLMVC.
6. The detail about Pink listening for Jennie’s humming appears in H. Wells, “Crimson Crime at Glenburney Manor,” September 1933, 57.
7. “Deformed Hand Again to Fore in Murder Case,” ND, August 16, 1932.
8. “Slain Spinster’s Own Gun Sought as Death Weapon,” TP, August 11, 1932; Charles East interview with Chief of Police Robinson, March 17, 1977, East Papers, LLMVC.
9. Burns’s confession and news accounts were consistent in saying there were three shots fired. While it was reported that Merrill was hit three times by bullets, the autopsy report listed only two wounds — to the neck and the left chest. Jane Surget Merrill, Standard Certificate of Death, Adams County Certificates of Death, State File 10970 (32–10970), MDAH.
10. Sheriff Roberts suggested that a tall man carried her body out of the house. Dana was tall. “Bridge Near ‘Skunk’s Nest’ Yields Clue in Merrill Murder,” TP, August 13, 1932.