Aunt Mary Sims Murrell in 1787 joins an interracial Baptist Church in Hawkins County Tennessee

Benjamin and Mary MURRELL are found in the records of the Bent Creek Baptist church (then in Hawkins County, Tennessee) on the third Saturday of August in 1787, when the church minutes state: "The church met at Thomas MURRELS and after divine service proceeded to receive Mary MURREL by experience. 2nd Miciah BUNCH and Lydia his wife by letter 3rd. Jeffrey MURREL and Margaret his wife by recommendation. 4th Received Moses JOHNSON and Sarah his wife by letter and Thomas TONECANLEY by experience and baptism given up for constitution Thomas MURREL, Benjamin MURREL, and Mary his wife, and Jeffry MURREL and Martha his wife, Bartlett SIMS and Elizabeth his wife, Negroe Sal, Agnes JOHNSON, Elisha WALLEN, Micahah BUNCH, Lydia BUNCH, Moses JOHNSON, Sarah JOHNSON, Mary DOTSON [DODSON], Elisha DEBUSK and Mary Williams." (Bent Creek, Journey into Century Three, by Glenn Alfred Toomey, 1988, Church minutes, p. 43) 

Mary Sims Murrell was a sister of the Sims brothers of the "Sims Intruders." She and Benjamin Murrell joined them in taking flatboats down the Elk River into what became Limestone County, Alabama, but was then Chickasaw country. She gave birth to 2 or 3 children there at the Sims Settlement including William Murrell in April 1809. They were twice burned out by soldiers from Fort Hampton. [William named a daughter Lucinda; Lucinda Sims was the name of a first cousin of his who died in Columbus, Mississippi, where she was taken as a stepdaughter of William Cocke, the former US Senator from Tennessee.]