Help From Beyond, Coincidence or My Imagination?

Jane Surget Merrill............1864-1932






If you've been reading this blog for any length of time,
you know I am truly fascinated by the life and death of
Jennie Merrill of Natchez! I love history, a good mystery
and Natchez and this woman's story involves all three.






As I've said before, I got interested in Jennie through The Goat
Castle Murder story in Harnett T. Kane's 1947 book "Natchez".
In 2000, I spoke with a lady named Karlyn Richie from Natchez
who voluntarily sent me the paperback book " The Goat Castle Murder"
by Carolyn Vance Smith and Sim C. Callon. After reading it, I was
hooked and knew someday I wanted to tackle a fact based historical
fiction novel on Jennie Merrill's life. I put it on the back burner.




In 2006 I started doing research, visited the locations, although I did not
meet any of the home owners nor see the inside of three remaining
homes. I visited and took photos of all four of the persons involved graves.
I couldn't seem to get the information I needed though. I could find no one
who'd really known any of the four or the answers to why these people
became eccentric after showing so much promise in their youth.



2009! It all comes together! Starting with all of you bloggers interest in
the story, the fact that all three remaining houses were on Pilgrimage Tour
and reading a hatchet job book based on the case, my NEED to write this
story blossomed!



Now here's the part that fascinates me. All the owners invited me back to share what they know.
I met a woman 103 years old who did know Jennie and she invited me back to talk about it! I have ordered several out of print non-fiction books about this era in Natchez to help me capture the feel of this time frame. Last night while reading one of those books I was "blown" away!!



The book is a memoir of a woman from Natchez. It is a very interesting and
vividly descriptive work.It was written in 1950. She was friends with Jennie
Merrill, Duncan Minor, Octavia Dockery and Dick Dana! She wrote a 5 page chapter
on them and the murder. I was not expecting this, and I sat straight up in the bed
and said; Oh My God!



The really " strange part" is I had come to some of my own conclusions about
why Jennie and Duncan became reclusive, her conclusions matched mine!
I believe that Dick Dana was schizophrenic, so did she! I had reservations about why
Duncan Minor's mother was against him marrying Jennie. Kay the owner of Oakland,
Duncan's family home, and I discussed this when I was there. This book told me the reason!
The author's brother was also the attorney of both Jennie and Duncan!



I cannot tell you how exciting it is to have this book. Apparently not even the owners of these homes know about this book! I can't even tell you how I discovered this book and ordered it!
Am I destined to write a book about Jennie Merrill? Did I get help from beyond? Is it all a
matter of coincidence or is my imagination in overdrive? What do you think?

"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.