Laura Wright 
For generations, a massive white oak stood outside New Holland, Georgia, near the edge of a swamp.
The tree was ancient, isolated, and associated with a terrible story.
According to local legend, twelve murdered men haunted the ground beneath its branches. Long after their deaths, travelers passing the old oak reportedly heard desperate pleas for mercy. Others heard sobbing, groans of agony, and the unmistakable rattle of chains.
The voices belonged, according to the legend, to twelve prisoners who had been marched to the tree and executed after the Civil War.
Their killers were two men named Benjamin and Robert Jordan.
And if an elderly man named Howard Thompson had not preserved the story for a reporter more than a century ago, their strange and violent history might have disappeared completely.
Howard Thompson Remembers
Howard Thompson was only ten years old when Bob and Ben Jordan began taking vengeance upon the surrounding region.
By the time Thompson’s account was recorded, he was an elderly man.
Much of the story of the Jordans had already begun slipping into obscurity.
What remained was a tale of war, revenge, murder, and an ancient white oak that supposedly remembered what happened beneath its branches.
Bob and Ben Jordan Go to War
Bob and Ben Jordan were cousins from Pickens County.
Like countless other young Southern men of their generation, they enlisted and fought during the Civil War. From everything known about their lives before the conflict, they were apparently as law-abiding as their neighbors.
But the world they returned to was not the world they had left.
During their absence, something horrific had happened to Bob Jordan’s family.
A Family Destroyed
While the cousins were away fighting, a group of men descended upon Bob’s home.
No one ever established precisely who they were. They may have been bushwhackers, deserters, or guerrilla Union soldiers.
Whoever they were, their actions were brutal.
Bob’s wife and sister were raped.
His seventy-year-old father was taken captive.
The elderly man was tortured and dragged for approximately sixty miles until little remained of his body.
When Bob and Ben returned from the war and discovered what had happened, something apparently changed in both men.
From that point forward, deserters, bushwhackers, and suspicious drifters became potential targets.
The Jordans wanted vengeance.
From Soldiers to Recruiting Officers
Bob and Ben became recruiting officers.
On the surface, their new position gave them legitimate authority.
But according to the story, their motives were considerably darker.
It was suspected that the cousins had volunteered for the work because it provided them with an opportunity to pursue the kinds of men they blamed for the atrocities committed against Bob’s family.
Soon, the Jordans were arresting men throughout the region.
In Gilmer County alone, they apprehended twenty-six.
Two prisoners escaped while being transported to the jail in Gainesville.
Curiously, the Jordans did not pursue them.
The remaining twenty-four were incarcerated.
Then twelve of those men were selected.
They would never reach Gainesville.
The March to the White Oak
The following morning, the twelve prisoners were chained together.
The Jordans marched them toward an ancient white oak standing outside town near the swamp.
Whatever the prisoners believed was going to happen, their destination was not a courtroom or jail.
When they reached the tree, the twelve men were arranged as though facing a firing squad.
Among them was a frail fifteen-year-old boy.
He was apparently so weak that a larger prisoner beside him had to help him remain standing.
Then Bob Jordan drew his pistol.
Twelve Men Beneath the Tree
Bob shot the prisoners one at a time.
Some of the condemned men fell to their knees and prayed.
Others begged for their lives.
Their pleas made no difference.
One after another, the twelve men were killed beneath the white oak.
Afterward, their bodies were burned.
The remains were buried together in a shallow grave near the tree.
The Jordans’ vengeance did not end there.
Bob Jordan’s Book of the Dead
Bob reportedly began keeping a diary of the men he killed.
Inside the book, he recorded their names and the dates of their deaths.
As the number of killings increased, so did the Jordans’ notoriety.
Authorities began pursuing them.
During one attempt to escape law enforcement, Bob dropped his diary.
When authorities examined it, they supposedly discovered more than 125 names.
After losing the book, Bob was said to have stopped documenting his killings.
By then, however, the cousins were no longer simply avenging the crimes committed against Bob’s family.
Their lives had become a continuous flight from the law.
The Violent Deaths of Bob and Ben Jordan
Eventually, the two cousins separated in an attempt to avoid capture.
Neither died peacefully.
Bob Jordan fled to Florida.
There, he was shot and killed by a frail man.
Ben Jordan made his way to Texas.
He was stabbed to death.
The two men who had survived the Civil War and embarked upon a violent campaign of vengeance both eventually died at the hands of other men.
But the story beneath the white oak was not finished.
The Mass Grave Is Opened
Federal authorities eventually learned about the twelve men murdered at the old oak.
The shallow grave was exhumed.
The remains were removed and transported to the National Cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee, now known as Chattanooga National Cemetery.
The bodies were gone.
According to local legend, however, something remained behind.
The White Oak Becomes Haunted
Years passed.
The massive white oak continued standing at the edge of the swamp.
People who traveled near the tree began reporting strange sounds.
Some heard men begging for their lives.
Others heard cries for mercy.
Sobbing seemed to come from the ground.
There were groans of agony.
Most disturbing of all was the sound of chains.
The noises were said to recreate the final moments of the twelve prisoners who had been marched to the oak, chained together, and executed one by one.
The victims had been removed from their shallow grave.
According to the legend, their voices had not.
A Place That Remembered
Stories such as the White Oak of New Holland occupy an unusual place between history and folklore.
The supernatural portion of the story is simple. People passing an old tree heard the voices and chains of murdered men.
But behind that haunting lies a much darker historical account.
Two soldiers returned from war to discover that their family had suffered terrible violence. Their desire for vengeance apparently transformed into a campaign of killing. Eventually, twelve prisoners, including a fifteen-year-old boy, were taken to an isolated oak and executed without mercy.
Whether those events happened precisely as Howard Thompson remembered them is something historical research may eventually clarify.
The haunting itself is another matter.
Perhaps people heard nothing more than animals moving through the swamp, branches groaning in the wind, or chains and machinery somewhere in the distance.
Perhaps knowledge of what had happened beneath the oak transformed ordinary nighttime sounds into something far more disturbing.
Or perhaps places where terrible things happen sometimes acquire memories of their own.
What Became of the White Oak?
The great white oak no longer dominates the landscape as it once did.
The men supposedly buried beneath it were removed long ago, while Bob and Ben Jordan met violent deaths far from the place where their campaign of vengeance began.
Howard Thompson grew old.
The Civil War passed from living memory into history.
And eventually, the story itself nearly disappeared.
Yet an account survived of an isolated white oak outside New Holland where twelve chained prisoners were marched to their deaths.
For decades afterward, people passing the spot claimed they could still hear them.
Praying.
Begging.
Sobbing.
And somewhere beneath it all, the rattle of chains.
About the Author
