“‘Red-Headed Beast’ was Stone-Cold” by Wally Avett
Civil War Killer
One of the deadliest Southern guerillas during the Civil War is still little-known today, although he brought pure hell to Tennessee and Georgia counties just south and west of us.
His name was John P. Gatewood and he was often described as Captain Gatewood; his band of thieves and killers called Gatewood’s Scouts.
He murdered a group of Fannin County, Georgia youths in the gorge, where today’s US-64 crosses Madden Branch. The young men were headed to Cleveland to join the Union Army, which he despised.
Gatwood’s name is on a tombstone at Ducktown, identifying him as the killer of Clayton Fain, a Fannin County political leader. The Fain Building in downtown Murphy was built by Fain’s relatives, currently housing Paula’s Jewelers.
It’s a tangled tale with ties to Murphy, Andrews, the Cherokee Scout, local history and one of my novels, Rebel Bushwhacker.
LOCAL HISTORIAN
In the 1970’s, a fine local historian named Bob Barker was a frequent visitor at the offices of the Cherokee Scout. A unique character, Bob laughed and told funny stories, and had some ‘odd’ habits—such as wearing two hats. As he explained, the old hat had a hole in it, so instead of throwing it away, he just wore a new hat on top of it.
He drove an old Ford about twenty-years-old and, like the hats, he just bolted each year’s metal license plate on top of the others. There was a stack of plates about four inches thick protruding from his trunk lid.
But he liked the Cherokee Scout and all its employees. He’d fix us lunch periodically—a big pan of beans and a country ham he’d sliced thick for us with a big butcher knife.
Bob was an authority on the Civil War, whose papers are now gathered in the big library in Knoxville. He and his wife lived in Andrews but he maintained a voting residency at Maryville, Tennessee. Why? I never knew.
A Union bushwhacker burned the Courthouse at Murphy during the Civil War. So good ol’ Bob took it upon himself to have a small marble marker made locally. When completed, he then boarded a Greyhound bus out to Washington State, where he supposedly put the marker on the bushwhacker’s grave. It read “Here lies the SOB who burned the Murphy Courthouse….”
But that’s another story.
The one he planted in my brain over and over is how John P. Gatewood killed the Fannin County Union recruits on the Ocoee; his signature execution being a pistol-blast to the face, point-blank range.
NOVEL BASED ON TRUE INCIDENT
Years later, I wrote the novel Rebel Bushwhacker, in which the Ocoee massacre is a key scene. Another local source, who lived in the Ocoee area, had told me about the real incident, which I followed closely in writing the fictional version.
Four years ago, the State of Georgia put up a historical marker on the bridge at McCaysville, Georgia about the Madden Branch Massacre, naming Gatewood and all his victims, seeing as the victims were all Fannin County residents.
Barker had always wanted a marker on the actual spot in Polk County, Tennessee, but so far it has not been done.
I have never been able to find out more about Gatewood until recently. While wandering around the Web, I found that a book had been written about him by a research librarian at Rome, Georgia. John P. Gatewood by Larry D. Stephens. It is an amazing book I obtained through the Murphy Public Library.
REBEL GONE BAD
Gatewood was a regular Confederate soldier from a prosperous family who turned psycho when his sister was raped and killed by Union soldiers at the family home up near the Kentucky border. He became a guerilla leader, and a personal war was declared on Union supporters, but he and his band also killed and robbed Confederate supporters sometimes.
Gatewood rode into Ellijay, Georgia to avenge a raid there by pro-Union bushwhackers. A local witness gave the best description of him—no photos available—saying he was six feet tall, dark red hair falling in curls to his shoulders, riding a magnificent gray horse, “handsome as a picture.” He wore a diamond ring and was elegantly dressed, but the four revolvers on his belt “spoke of the desperate trade he followed.”
In January of 1865, Gatewood led a massive cattle-rustling raid on Rossville, Georgia. The Union Army had 1,000 cattle in a lightly-guarded supply depot there. Gatewood’s force of several hundred men seized the herd and drove them south, then into Northern Alabama for a starving town that had been left hungry by Union forces.
Author Stephens writes that Gatewood went to Texas after the War ended in 1865. Various records show today that he killed at least sixty people during the War, probably many more undocumented.
The Banner was, and still is, the leading newspaper in the Cleveland, Tennessee area. It carried a story in 1871 that Gatewood had been killed in a gunfight in Waco. My sources told me this news was received with gratitude in Cleveland, and thus I fictionalized a Gatewood ending in Rebel Bushwhacker.
Stephens goes on to say that the story was deliberately planted by Gatewood’s friends and family—a number still live in Cleveland-Chattanooga area—to discourage relatives of his victims from seeking revenge in Texas. He says Gatewood was a player in the cattle business, even had a wife and daughter, then simply disappeared forever.
ONWARD
Madden Branch, on US-64 at the foot of the Ocoee Gorge, has been in the process of getting a new bridge this summer. At Copperhill/McCaysville, the Gatewood marker is on the Tennessee end of the river bridge; the stream being the boundary between the two states.
Wally Avett is the author of Caney Fork (2013) and Last Bigfoot in Dixie (2014) (BelleBooks), and Coosa Flyer (2015) and Rebel Bushwhacker (2015) (Argus Publishing) www.wallyavett.com Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency https://loiaconoliteraryagency.com/authors/wally-avett/