By Dixie Norwood
MSNHA graduate assistant
As we begin the month of October, storytellers throughout the MSNHA dust off their tales of the weird & spooky. But do you know the story of the most feared criminal in Lauderdale County? It’s a good one.
During the 1870s, residents of Florence were terrified of a criminal gang known as the Clifton Shebang, or the Buggers. This gang terrorized numerous citizens in the Shoals area. The gang was made up of Civil War deserters and soldiers who had served not only served in the Confederate army but also in the Union army. Its leader, known as “Outlaw Tom Clark” or “Mountain Tom Clark,” was said to have once uttered the words, “No one will ever run over Tom Clark.” His words would come back to haunt him soon enough.
Tom Clark (1821-1872) began his career as a man who felt himself above law and order. He was forced into the life of a Confederate soldier in 1862 or 1863. Finding fault with the idea of law and order in the Confederate army, Clark soon ventured to Clifton, Tennessee, where he enlisted in the Union army, thinking that this would help him continue his life above the law. He soon realized that the life he hoped for was not what the army was all about.
He, along with other several other defectors from both the armies decided to make the law their own. Their heinous crimes against citizens in the Shoals area — most likely including the murders of three people when Union guerillas violently attacked John Wilson’s plantation in 1865 — made it a priority for their capture. In September, 1872, Clark, along with two other unidentified gang members, were apprehended while dining at a restaurant in Waterloo.
While the three men awaited punishment in a Lauderdale County jail, angry members of the community decided to take
matters into their own hands. They stormed the jail and removed “Mountain Tom Clark” and two others, took them to the nearby Florence Cemetery where they had dug three graves and hanged them from a tree. Thinking that a grave was just too nice for such a corrupt outlaw like Clark — and remembering his famous quote — the citizens supposedly buried him in the middle of a well-traveled road adjacent to the cemetery.
Today, if you drive down Florence Boulevard parallel to the Florence City Cemetery, you can read the marker for “Mountain Tom Clark.” But watch out for that bump in the middle of the road …
For more information, visit https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/61334, https://www.alabamapioneers.com/outlaw-mountain-tom-clark, https://www.al.com/life/2020/01/the-alabama-outlaw-buried-beneath-the-street.html
