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- [S117] The White-Caps - A History of the Organization in Sevier County, E. W. Crozier, Publisher, (Copyright 1899), Chapter XVII.
Among the many murders in Sevier county growing out of White-capping, none perhaps has been so bold and reckless as that of Aaron McMahan who was shot and killed from ambush in the month of July, 1896, by Newt Green and West Hendricks.
There is no doubt that this murder was instigated by the White-caps, and that Green and Hendricks were full-fledged members of that organized band of outlaws. The facts leading up this murder are about as follows:
Aaron McMahan, who was killed as above stated, lived in the Sixth district of Sevier county in what is known in East Tennessee as Wears Valley, one of the most beautiful little valleys in East Tennessee, nestling as it does at the foot of the great smoky mountains, and claiming for its citizenship many of the best citizens of Sevier county.
Among them was Aaron McMahan, a substantial farmer and hard-working, industrious man. He was about fifty years old and had a wife and a large family of children, some of whom were grown up and married and had family circles of their own, while his youngest was an infant at the mother’s breast.
Green and Hendricks were cousins and McMahan was their uncle, his wife being a sister of Greens father and Hendricks mother. Green and Hendricks lived near each other in the hills about three or four miles North of Wears Valley, near Pigeon Forge, which place has had more White-caps than any other locality in Sevier county, according to accepted reports.
McMahan’s daughter had married James Clabough, a poor but respected citizen of the county, who, at the time of the murder and prior to that time, had been living in what is known as the Little Cove, near to the home of Green and Hendricks, and on the public road leading into Wears Valley.
Claboughs wife had been accused by the White-caps of not being virtuous, and as they felt called upon, under their code of morals, to correct all unchaste conduct in their neighbors, they had, only a short time before the killing of McMahan, gone to the Clabough home, dragged Mrs. Clabough out of bed and house in the night and administered to her an unmerciful whipping.
The McMahan family were, of course, aroused over the matter and expressed their opinion freely against the White-caps and the cowardly night attacks on defenseless women.
Green and Hendricks, with others, were accused of being in the gang that had whipped Mrs. Clabough, and prosecutions and trials had grown out of it, one of the trials occurring before J. A. Tarwater, Esq., in Wears Valley, on the day before the murder.
The next morning after the trial, Aaron McMahan, his son Amos, and James Clabough, his son-in-law, with a two-horse wagon loaded with wheat, went to the Pigeon Forge Mills. While at the mills waiting to have their wheat ground, some of the White-caps came up and they all became engaged in a general quarrel growing out of the whipping of Mrs. Clabough.
About the middle of the afternoon, McMahan, his son and son-in-law, started for their home in Wears Valley., about eight miles distant. As they were passing through Little Cove, about four o’clock, in a lonely and secluded place with hills and dense woods on each side of the road, two gun shots suddenly rang out on that July evening which cost Aaron McMahan his life and dangerously wounded his two companions.
The horses, frightened by the gun shots, instantly became unmanageable and ran away. The elder McMahan, although having received his death wound, was conscious of what was happening, yet was powerless to stop the flying steeds, while Clabough received a wound in the back of the neck which so shocked him that he fell from the wagon unconscious and was left lying prostrate in the road. The younger McMahan, while not seriously wounded, having only received a flesh wound in the leg, was so dazed and frightened that he failed to realize the condition of affairs.
The team, however, was stopped by some parties who met it, and the wounded men taken to the nearest house, which was John Myers. The news soon spread from house to house until the whole community was aroused and had gathered at the place where the wounded men lay. Dr. Massey, of Sevierville, was at once sent for and did all he could do to allay their suffering. Clabough and young McMahan recovered, but Aaron McMahan, after lingering and suffering untold agonies for about ten days, died with the declaration on his lips that Newt Green and West Hendricks killed him.
It was, indeed, a heart-rending scene to see three inoffensive, law-abiding citizens of the county lying prostrated upon couches with blood issuing from ghastly wounds which meant certain death to one of them. The groans of the men, shot down in broad daylight, without cause and without notice, mingled with the piteous cries of wives with babes in their arms and little children clinging to their skirts in terror, brought tears to the eyes of the stout-hearted men who had gathered around the house in large numbers, and they no doubt vowed in their hearts that the cowards who had committed this foul murder should be punished, and that White-capism in Sevier county must cease.
The good resolutions there formed were kept, for West Hendricks and Newt Green are now serving an imprisonment of twenty years in the state penitentiary, and the White-cap organization is now extinct and its leaders scattered.
There is no doubt as to the guilt of Green and Hendricks. They planned and perpetrated this bloody broad daylight assassination, and the only wonder is that a jury should return a verdict of murder in the second degree and fix their punishment at twenty years in the penitentiary instead of condemning them to pay the penalty on the gallows.
Green and Hendricks were seen on the day of the murder near the place where the shooting occurred with guns, and were passed by McMahan and his associates that morning on their way to the mill at Pigeon Forge.
Aaron McMahan said from the very first that Green and Hendricks had shot him; that he heard a noise in the woods near the roadside, and just as he looked around and saw them their guns were discharged; that one was a rifle and the other a shot gun. To this statement he adhered unequivocally until he died, having made two or three formal dying declarations to this effect.
The accused men were at once arrested and given a preliminary hearing before Esquires J. A. Bryan and J. A. Tarwater who first held them to court under heavy bond for felonious assault, but after Aaron McMahan died a new warrant was issued charging them with murder, and they were held to court by J. R. Houk, Esq., without bond. They applied afterwards for bail under writ of habeas corpus before Judge Hicks, but it was denied them and they remained in the Sevier county jail until they were tried at the March term, 1897, of the circuit court, which resulted as above stated in a sentence of twenty years in the penitentiary. Pending an appeal to the supreme court, Green and Hendricks with a number of other prisoners overpowered the jailer, H. D. Bailey, and made good their escape.
Among those who made their escape with Green and Hendricks was the notorious George Thurmer, who is well known in criminal circles and who was afterwards recaptured in the state of Kentucky by deputy sheriff Tom Davis, who has so long been a terror to criminals in Sevier county and especially to the White-caps.
After their escape from jail, Green and Hendricks scouted in different parts of Sevier county, but most of the time in the hill country around Pigeon Forge and Little Cove where they were harbored and protected by their White-cap friends and sympathizers.
Many were the stories that were afloat during the summer of 1897 as to the boldness with which these two criminals traveled over the community and along the public highways, sometimes at work in the fields and at other times attending public gatherings in the community and yet not discovered or recaptured by the officers of the law. To what extent these reports are true we do not know, but it is safe to say they played a bold hand, and, backed by their White-cap associates and sympathizers, they played the Jesse James act pretty well in defying the officers of the law.
Much interest was centered in the trial of these two White-cap murderers. J. R. Penland, Esq., who has shown a keen interest in putting an end to White-capping in Sevier county and restoring to her and her people the good name they formerly bore, was retained by Aaron McMahan, prior to his death and after he had received his death wounds, to prosecute the slayers.
He undertook the duty and prosecuted the case with all the vigor and ability characteristic of this well known lawyer. The defendants were represented by W. W. Mullendore, Geo. L. Zirkle, W. G. Caton and A. M. Paine, an able array of counsel, but with all their ability and all the aid which the White-cap organization and could bring to them in the way of proof and witnesses, and in the selection of jurors, yet a jury of twelve men said that they were guilty and should suffer for their bloody deed.
As before stated, it is difficult to see how the jury could return a verdict of murder in the second degree when the facts seem to make it a most aggravated case of murder in the first degree, yet it is just one of those unexpected results which often occur in jury trials.
While Green and Hendricks, after their escape from jail, had remained for several months among their friends in Sevier county secure from the officers of the law, yet they concluded that it would be safer for them to roam in different fields, and it is said that during the July term of the circuit court in Sevierville, 1897, they boldly walked into the town after dark and, with friends, hired a hack from a livery stable and drove to Knoxville that night and on the following morning boarded the west bound train for the Lone Star state.
The chief cause of their sudden departure from this section is supposed to be the presence of Judge Nelson who was to hold the Circuit Court of Sevier county in the place of Judge Hicks. It was understood by the White-caps, whether true or not, that the new judge was sent there especially to deal with them, and it seems that his presence did strike terror in their ranks.
So Green and Hendricks made up their minds to leave at the time stated, but it is asserted on reliable authority that several important meetings were held prior to their departure in which it was decided to do some desperate things. At one of these meetings it was agreed that Dr. Massey, who was an important witness against Green and Hendricks on their trial, J. R. Penland, who had prosecuted them, and Tom Davis, whom they hated worse than Satan, should all be put to death, and that Green and Hendricks were the ones delegated by the mystic order to execute this desperate scheme.
One of the White-caps gave out this story, whether true or not, by informing one of the parties that such an agreement was made and such an order given in their meeting. He told of the time and manner in which the crime was to be committed in order that he might be on guard and protect himself against his would-be assassins, as the informer was a better friend of his than of the White-caps. In this way the three named gentlemen were put on their guard and no doubt would have given their assailants a warm reception if they had been attacked, but on that very night Green and Hendricks left Sevier County in the manner above stated.
It is to be hoped that the above story was not true, but if they would deliberately waylay the McMahan’s in broad daylight and without warning murder them, would they not be equally willing to wreak vengeance on others, especially when urged and ordered to do so by the organization which had sheltered them in their extremity?
No doubt the White-cap organization, and particularly some of its members who almost felt the halter tightening around their necks, were especially anxious to get rid of the three men marked as the victims of that midnight conspiracy. But even some good may come out of Nazareth . As bad as the White-caps were and whatever bad there was in the one who revealed this murderous scheme, yet he is to be commended for having averted a crime which would again have blackened the character of Sevier county.
We close this chapter by saying that a condition of society that will allow men to be shot down in broad daylight on the public highways while following their lawful and peaceful avocations, and afterward to shield and harbor the perpetrators in the community where it is done is an appalling state of affairs indeed. And yet such was the history surrounding the murder of poor Aaron McMahan.
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 26 Dec 2014.
Upland Chronicles: Cousins Hendricks and Green were captured in Texas
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