Robert Green
We have never come across an actual written account of the Robert Green story - only he-said she-said references to his story, but never the story itself. Our interpretation here may only serve to muddy the waters further.
The story as we have heard it can be distilled into a sentence or two. In essence, teenager Robert Green was caught cheating at cards and was subsequently murdered at the playing table. Cheaters will not be tolerated. His headstone has a playing card spade carved into it to symbolize the episode. End of story.
That's not very much to go on.
Smoky Mountain historian Mike Maples makes passing reference to Robert "who was murdered in a card game" in two of his GoSmokies essays, both posted in 2009. During one of our sit-downs with Maples (probably in 2015), we asked him for more detail on this story. By then he was less certain the death was a murder, or even at the card table. Maples said Robert liked to play cards, so they put the spade on his headstone. But whether it was murder? We still don't know.
Folklore being folklore, we find ourselves questioning some of the underpinnings of this brief story.
For starters, Robert Green was a fourteen year old local boy, not a career card shark who came into Dodge to bilk the townspeople. Do you really shoot a boy, even if he cheated, knowing the consequences to follow?
This was not exactly the wild, wild West where you brought your side arm to the card table in case you needed to settle accounts with some low life. It is not an old Gunsmoke rerun where an argument breaks out over a poker game at the Long Branch Saloon. It was 1911, in an established Tennessee community.
We don't know Robert's personality. Maybe he was an all around bad apple and alienated everyone around him. Maybe everyone already hated him and this was just a good excuse to end something long festering. Maybe not. Probably not.
The story, as it makes its rounds, carries a supposed moral tale about keeping your interactions honest. Even if you have to shoot someone. There is no mention of the killer being brought to justice, having stood up for truth and honesty and all that is holy. Even if you have to murder someone. It all just sounds a mite extreme and a mite contrived.
Robert Green is buried in the Marion Green Cemetery above Soak Ash Creek, inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Pittman Center, TN.