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- [S117] The White-Caps - A History of the Organization in Sevier County, E. W. Crozier, Publisher, (Copyright 1899), Chapter XXV.
James Catlett Tipton was born in Sevierville, Sevier county. He was named for Mr. James Catlett, an old and respected citizen of the county and father of Bob Catlett, one of the alleged accomplices of Tipton in the Whaley murder. He is the only son of B. J. And Abigail Tipton. His mother still survives, but his father died many years ago when his son was but a small boy. By the death of her husband, Mrs. Tipton was left to battle with the world with three small children to support, to wit: James Catlett and two daughters, one of the latter now being the wife of B. B. Bailey, and the other the wife of Mr. Mack Blair, both of Sevier county and highly respected citizens.
J. C., or Catlett Tipton, as he was familiarly known, was a bright and handsome boy of good address, and was generally well liked by his associates in and around Sevierville where he spent his boyhood days.
His education was limited to that of the common schools of the county, but in these he acquired a fair business education sufficient to enable him to transact ordinary business. He is said to have been apt in his studies and would have made a good scholar had he continued in school and applied himself diligently. But, being fond of outdoor sports of all kinds, this in a measure distracted his mind from his school work. In the running and jumping matches, baseball and other games usually engaged in by the school boys, young Tipton was a favorite and always among the first to be chosen. He became an expert baseball player and won distinction in this art among the local teams. He was a member of the Eureka team for a number of years, composed of Sevier county boys, of which sheriff Tom Davis was captain. Pleas Wynn was also a member of this team and a very fine player, being the fleetest on foot of any one in the team.
Tipton was not only an expert in such games and pastimes as above referred to, but he was very fond of hunting and fishing, and he was equally as successful in this field of sport.
He was a crack shot with a gun or pistol, and could bring in as much game as any one who went after it. Having been raised on the very banks, as it were, of the two Pigeon rivers, when it was not unlawful to fish with the gig, or seine, or by shooting them, and delighting in the sport, he became a skillful fisherman and spent much time with the finny tribe.
So strong was his inclination for this kind of sport, he still followed it, according to his own confessions, in violation of the law after it had been made a highly penal offence to take fish from the streams in any manner except by hook and line. Even on the night of the Whaley murder, it is claimed that he and Wynn were fishing, both above and below Sevierville, with dynamite, and succeeded in capturing a fine lot of fish. This fishing tour, which the parties related in the testimony upon the witness stand, enters largely into the history of this famous trial.
Tipton was also a good mechanic, being both a carpenter and a blacksmith. For the past fifteen years he spent the greater portion of his time at the carpenter’s trade. While not a fine workman, yet he was an average country carpenter and found ready employment on many of the best jobs in the county.
His brother-in-law, B. B. Bailey, with whom he lived for some time, is one of the best blacksmiths and wagon makers in the country, and Tipton spent enough time with him in his shop to become a fair mechanic in this line. And at the time of the Whaley murder, and for some months previous, he was working with Bailey in Sevierville, while his family lived two or three miles in the country.
In the spring and summer of 1884, Tipton was engaged to assist in the construction of a hotel at Seaton’s Summer City, Seaton’s Springs, about eight miles above Sevierville. While thus engaged, he formed the acquaintance of the girl who afterwards became his wife. She was the daughter of Mr. James Seaton, the owner of Seaton’s Springs and proprietor of the hotel Tipton was helping to erect. Their courtship was short, but romantic, and on the 21st of June, 1884, James Catlett Tipton and Mary R. Seaton were united in the holy bonds of matrimony by J. H. Atchley, Esq., a Justice of the Peace of Sevier county. This marriage was stoutly opposed by the parents of Miss Seaton, but love which had sprung up between these two young people was not to be thwarted by parents or any one else, and over the protests of father and mother the young lady left home and was married as above stated - a marriage which is commonly termed a runaway match. Miss Seaton was what might be called a pretty country girl of splendid character and was very popular among her associates.
A reconciliation was soon affected between the young wife and her parents and she and her husband returned to the parental home, where they were received and treated in the most hospitable manner.
Mrs. Tipton was a devoted Christian, having been raised by the most devout Christian parents, and made her husband a loving, helpful wife. As a result of their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Tipton have five bright-eyed and healthful boys, who live with their mother near Sevierville.
While Catlett Tipton was a boy and a young man of good appearance and polite address, as well as above the average in intelligence, yet he was always inclined to be a little wild and run with wild boys. He liked the new and adventurous, and this, combined with wicked associates, proved his ruin. When the nefarious practice of white-capping broke out in Sevier county, Tipton early espoused the cause of the new order, and by reason of his intelligence and his superior executive ability, he at once became a leader and directed much of the effective work of the organization.
After Sevierville and immediate vicinity became the field and center of active operations of the White-caps, Tipton became the captain of the band, and thus, as it is understood, was the chief officer. Now that the organization has gone to pieces, and its leaders scattered - many of them having left the country, while others are in the clutches of the law, people generally feel that they can speak out freely and express their sentiments with impunity; hence it is not so difficult to obtain information regarding White-caps as it formerly was. For this reason nearly every man who belonged to the White-cap organization in Sevier county is now known. Many people talk it out freely. Even some of the persons who joined the order but who joined no raids and are guilty of no outrages, now acknowledge it. Hence our information that Catlett Tipton was a member and a leader of the White-caps in Sevier county is absolutely reliable.
He perhaps swore more men into the order than any other one man. While at this date he has made no published confession of his connection with white-capping, yet he has told to a number of reliable persons much of his white-cap history. He has told of a number of raids that he was on, and who was whipped and who did the whipping. He has told of quite a number of prominent citizens who belonged to the order and who were sworn in by himself as the authorized official of the band.
Many of these citizens were for a long time accused of belonging to the White-caps, but as often denied by their friends, and, until of late, the truth was never known. But since Tipton has made voluntary statements about these matters and given details of times and places and circumstances, all of which comport with reason and former suspicions, there can be but little doubt that he has told the truth about these matters.
The names of the parties could be given, but on account of their prominence and the request of Tipton that their names should not be divulged, it is deemed proper not to bring them before the public.
As before stated, Tipton named specifically several raids that he had made, as a White-cap, the names of those with him, as well as the names of the individuals who were whipped. Some of these were in the town of Sevierville and some in the immediate vicinity around it, while others were in more remote parts of the county.
Tipton and Pleas Wynn have been indicted and convicted of the murder of the Whaleys and sentenced to hang, on the 4th day of January, 1899, at Sevierville. Like many other cases of this kind, it is not absolutely known that they are the parties who committed this crime, but it is safe to say that a large majority of the people, who know the facts and heard the testimony, believe that they are guilty.
There is no doubt that Tipton’s association with the White-cap organization and the bad men who belonged to it, brought him to the sad and almost hopeless condition in which he now finds himself.
The worst men of the country joined his band, with whom he held midnight caucuses and planned raids against supposed violators of their moral creed. Among these were Pleas Wynn and Bob Catlett. It is generally known that Bob Catlett joined the White-caps about two years prior to the Whaley murder; and while Tipton had known something of Catlett all his life, yet their association was never very intimate, until the latter joined Tipton’s band of outlaws. Because of Bob Catlett’s standing financially - being a man of large estate in that county - the captain of the White-caps undoubtedly felt that he was a great acquisition to the organization.
If Tipton and Wynn are hung, it will be on the theory that they were hired by Bob Catlett to go to the Whaley house and kill both William Whaley and his wife on the night of the 28th of December, 1896.
Bob Catlett himself, after several intimate conversations with Pleas Wynn on the morning of that day, left with four horses for Asheville, N. C., or other points south.
Wynn and Tipton admit that they left home that night about dark, and were out till about two o’clock by themselves, at which hour they returned home and retired. But they insist that they were fishing up and down the river from Sevierville, and therefore did not go to Whaley’s nor commit the murder. Whether guilty or not, a chain of circumstances has been so closely woven about them that two juries and the circuit judge who tried them, and the Supreme Court, which affirmed the verdicts of two juries, have all been satisfied of their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced them to die, and this is the end of the law.
It was his association and talk with Bob Catlett immediately before the Whaleys were killed, coupled with the fact that bad feelings existed between Catlett and the Whaleys, and the further fact that the latter had, only a few weeks before they were killed, gone before the grand jury at Sevierville and given information on which an indictment was found against Bob Catlett and Bob Wade for alleged white capping, or charges of that nature, that caused the arrest and prosecution of Wynn and Tipton.
Everybody greatly sympathizes with Tipton’s wife and little children, who, being left in straitened circumstances, will have a struggle not only against poverty through life, but against the humiliation and disgrace that always follow the conviction for such a crime and an execution upon the gallows.
But be it said that no blame is laid at the door of the good wife. She, perhaps, has given him better counsel and certainly has not encouraged him in a course of wrong doing. She still clings to him with the love that inspired her to forsake parents and home, with all its endearments, and cast her all upon his manly arm in his young manhood. She is none the less respected by good people because she does thus show her devotion to her husband in his last extremity. This shows the true woman and loving wife, whether he is innocent or guilty of the great crime for which he has been sentenced to die.
His old and respected mother, who still survives, and who has given her son better advice, as well as his two sisters, come in for a full share of sympathy from all good people.
Let us hope that the little children whom Catlett Tipton leaves behind him to bear his name, will not follow in the foot-prints of their father, which, sooner or later, will inevitably lead to irretrievable ruin.
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