"The Goat Castle Murder"

Years ago I read a book called " Natchez On the Mississippi" by Harnett T. Kane. The book,
written in 1947, gives the history of the first settlers of Natchez. Not only did I fall in love with Harnett Kane's writing, I fell in love with the town of Natchez. It would not be until I returned to live in Mississippi, that I would get to visit Natchez. I go there often now. It is a pretty place filled with gorgeous homes that were built before " The War" as it's referred to there.

One home that is no longer standing was called "Glenwood", though it was better known in its later years as:
" The Goat Castle". I was told about this place and its famous history by a lady at the historical society who gave me a copy of a small paperback book written by Carolyn Vance Smith and Sim C. Callon titled: The Goat Castle Murder". The title is a little bit deceiving as the murder took place next door at " Glenburnie" not at "Glenwood"(Goat Castle).
On August 4, 1932, Jane Surget Merrill better known as Jennie Merrill was shot dead around 6:30 P.M. in her home "Glenburnie". She was a sixty-eight year old, eccentric, aristocratic, wealthy spinster from one of the oldest families in Natchez.



The graves of General Thomas P. Dockery and his daughter Octavia Dockery, located in the Natchez City Cemetery. The inscription on Octavia's stone reads: Octavia Dockery Mistress of Goat Castle

Eventually, her two next door neighbors at "Goat Castle" would be wrongly charged with her murder, bringing world wide attention to the case. Richard(Dick) Dana and Octavia Dockery

had aristocratic backgrounds themselves and had at one time been in a group of four friends who were inseparable. Jennie Merrill, Octavia Dockery, Dick Dana and Duncan Minor had been in their youth, the toast of Natchez! Always together, all from elite families, all expected to soar high in their adulthood. It was not to be. All would become eccentric and two would become destitute.

No one seems to know just exactly where the friendship started to go downhill but after they had all become aloof adults and began exhibiting strange behavior, Jennie and Duncan became bitter enemies with Octavia and Dick. It was the well known feud between them ,that led to Octavia and Dick being arrested for Jennie's murder.

Jennie Merrill and Duncan Minor, who everyone claimed was a look- a- like to Clark Gable, were second cousins, cousins who fell in love. Duncan's mother was vehemently opposed to the marriage. It is rumored that they did indeed marry later in another state and kept it secret.

For the last twenty years of Jennie Merrill's life, Duncan Minor rode his horse every evening at sunset to spend the night at "Glenburnie" with Jennie, leaving at sunrise.It was Duncan who discovered Jennie's body when he arrived to spend the night.

Octavia was the daughter of General Thomas P. Dockery, a close friend of Ulysses S. Grant. So close that in 1881, the former President Grant, escorted Octavia to one of New York City's Grandest Balls. In her twenties, Octavia was a social butterfly attending parties and balls in New Orleans, Vicksburg, Natchez, New York and even Paris. Once an aspiring poet and writer she became a wretched human being as the years past. She became house mates with Dick Dana in the abandoned, but once lovely Glenwood, now in shambles with no running water, yet still full of beautiful furniture once belonging to Robert E. Lee's family. There were leather bound books belonging to Gen. Lee that eventually became chew toys for the goats roaming freely in the house. They also chewed the rockers off Gen. Lee's baby cradle.

The suave Duncan Minor........

Dick and Octavia on a Victorian Sofa with their house pets.

Richard Henry Clay "Dick" Dana was said to have been a tremendous concert pianist with a great future in music ahead of him. After graduating from Vanderbilt he went to study music in New York City and sang in the Christ Church Episcopal Choir. Then his ambition to be a Concert Pianist was abandoned after a window slammed shut on his hand crushing two fingers. His hand was left deformed and he returned to Natchez a broken man. He began to exhibit very strange behavior that would probably today be diagnosed as Schizophrenia. Conversations with imaginary people, he refused to bathe or change clothes. He let both his hair and beard grow long and unkempt. Octavia had him declared insane to keep him from losing "Glenwood" for back taxes and became his legal guardian. They started to raise chickens and goats along with stray dogs and cats letting all the animals have free reign of the house.

Jeannie Merrill it turned out was not murdered by her friends/enemies Dick and Octavia.

The murderer was a black man named George Pearls who had gone with an accomplice, Emily Burns owner of a Natchez rooming house to "borrow" some money from Miss Merrill. Emily Burns confessed that Jennie refused to give George Pearls any money and then reached for a pistol laying on a side board at which time he fatally shot her. George Pearls was himself shot and killed by a Pine Bluff, Arkansas sheriff's deputy three days later. Emily Burns was convicted of being an accomplice and served eight years.

Jennie Merrill left her entire estate which included two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash,

Glenburnie Plantation and two Louisiana plantations to Duncan Minor.

Duncan Minor lived seven more years and willed the estate back to Jennie's family upon his death.

Dick Dana continued to exist in destitute squalor with Octavia being known as the " Wild Man of Goat Castle" until his death in 1948 at age 77 , from Pneumonia.

Octavia lived alone at Goat Castle for another six months dying at age 84 in April 1949.

Octavia's family held an auction at Goat Castle after her death where the remaining antiques,

Oil Paintings, rare books, a table and lamp belonging to Mrs. Jefferson Davis who was a relative of Octavia's sister's husband, along with letters written by Civil War Generals Lee, Grant and

Dockery and President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, brought Fifteen Thousand Dollars.

I have often wondered how four young people, close friends, with all the advantages in life to help them excel, all became extremely eccentric people in their mid life years. What were the odds of that happening? All four are buried in Natchez City Cemetery.