Micajah "Big" Harpe (1748? – August 1799) and Wiley "Little" Harpe (1750? – February 8, 1804), were murderers, highwaymen, and river pirates, who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the late 18th century.

Their crimes appear to have been motivated more by blood lust than financial gain and many historians have called them the America's first true "serial killers".

The Harpes are said to have been brothers (though some sources say cousins), born in Orange County, North Carolina to Scottish parents. Their father or their uncles were allegedly of Tory allegiance, who fought on the British side during the Revolutionary War. Big Harpe is known to have had two wives, sisters Susan and Betsey Roberts. Little Harpe married Sally Rice, daughter of a Baptist minister.

Disputed claims of early lives and involvement in Revolutionary War and Indian Wars

In Jon Musgrave's article of Oct. 23, 1998, in the southern Illinois newspaper, American Weekend, through thorough research, he cited the T. Marshall Smith 1855 book, Legends of the War of Independence, and of the Earlier Settlements in the West, that the Harpes were much older than most mainstream historians have acknowledged. Smith stated he had heard stories from his grandfather, older pioneers, and those who had interviewed two of the Harpe wives.

One of his stories was that the Harpe brothers were actually cousins, William and Joshua Harper (who would sometime later take the alias Harpe) who had emigrated in 1759 or 1760 at a young age from Scotland. Their fathers were brothers, John and William Harper, who settled in Orange County, North Carolina between 1761 and 1763.

The Harper patriarchs were loyal to the British Crown and were known as Royalists, Kings Men, Loyalists, and Tories and may also have been regulators involved in the North Carolina Regulator War. The anti-British Crown neighbors of the Harpers were known as Whigs, Rebels, and Patriots. Around April or May, 1775, the young Harper cousins left North Carolina and went to Virginia to find overseer jobs on a slave plantation.

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, little is known of the Harpes' whereabouts. According to Smith based an the eyewitness account of Captain James Wood, they joined a Tory rape gang in North Carolina and took part in the kidnapping of three teenage girls, with a fourth girl being rescued by Captain Wood. These gangs took advantage of the war by raping, stealing, and murdering, and burning and destroying the property, especially farms, of patriot colonists.

In an interview Smith had with the Patriot soldier, Frank Wood, who was the son of Captain James Wood, he revealed that he was the older brother of Susan Wood Harpe, the later kidnapped wife of Micajah "Big" Harpe. Frank Wood claimed to have seen the Harpe brothers, serving "loosely" as Tory militia, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion, at the Battles of Blackstocks, November 20, 1780, and Cowpens, January 17, 1781.

They also appeared in the same supporting role at the Battle of King's Mountain, October 7, 1780, under British commander Major Patrick Ferguson. These battles that the Harpes supposedly participated in resulted in major Patriot victories.

Following the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781, the Harpes left North Carolina, dispersed with their Indian allies, the Chickamauga Cherokees, to Tennessee villages west of the Appalachian Mountains.

On April 2, 1781, they joined war parties of four hundred Chickamauga Cherokee and attacked the Patriot frontier settlement of Bluff Station, at Fort Nashborough (now Nashville, Tennessee), which would again be assaulted by them, on either July 20, 1788, or April 9, 1793. A Captain James Leiper was killed in the 1781 attack on the fort and may have been related to the John Leiper, who was later involved in the killing of Micajah "Big" Harpe in Kentucky in 1799.

On August 19, 1782, the Harpes accompanied a British-backed, Chickamauga Cherokee war party to Kentucky in the Battle of Blue Licks, where they helped to defeat an army of Patriot frontiersmen. During the Harpe brothers' early frontier period among the Chickamauga Cherokee, they lived in the village of Nickajack, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, for approximately twelve to thirteen years.

During this span of time, they kidnapped Maria Davidson and later Susan Wood, and made them their women. In 1794, the Harpes and their women abandoned their Indian habitation, before the main Chickamauga Cherokee village of Nickajack in eastern Tennessee was destroyed in a raid by American settlers. They would later relocate to Powell's Valley, around Knoxville, Tennessee, where they stole food and supplies from local pioneers.

The whereabouts of the Harpes were unknown between the summer of 1795 and spring of 1797, but by spring they were dwelling in a cabin on Beaver's Creek, near Knoxville. On June 1, 1797, Wiley Harpe married Sarah Rice, which was recorded in the Knox County, Tennessee marriage records. Sometime during 1797, the Harpes would begin their trail of death in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois.

Atrocities

As young men, the Harpes lived with renegade Creek and Cherokee Indians who committed atrocities against white settlers and against their own tribes. By 1797 the Harpes were living near Knoxville, Tennessee. However, they were driven from the town after being charged with stealing hogs and horses.

They were also accused of murdering a man named Johnson, whose body was found in a river, ripped open and weighted with stones. This became a characteristic of the Harpes' murders. They butchered anyone at the slightest provocation, even babies.

R.E. Banta in The Ohio claims that Micajah Harpe even bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him. This was the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse. From Knoxville they fled north into Kentucky. They entered the state on the Wilderness Road, near the Cumberland Gap. They are believed to have murdered a peddler named Peyton, taking his horse and some of his goods. They then murdered two travelers from Maryland.

Deaths

In July 1799, John Leiper raised a posse to avenge the murder of Mrs. Stegal, including Moses Stegal, the victim's husband. Leiper reached Harpe first, and managed to shoot Big Harpe. After a scuffle with a tomahawk, Leiper overcame Harpe. When Stegal arrived, he decapitated Harpe and stuck his head on a pole, at a crossroads still known as "Harpe's Head" or Harpe's Head Road in Webster County, Kentucky.

By the end of their reign of terror, the "Bloody Harpes" were responsible for the known murders of no less than 40 men, women, and children. Little Harpe eluded the authorities for some time, using the alias John Setton, until allegedly being caught in an effort to get a reward of his own on the head of an outlaw, Samuel Mason. He was captured in 1803, tried and hanged on February 8, 1804.

Harpe women

According to Jon Musgrave, the Harpe women, after cohabitation with the brothers, led relatively respectable and normal lives. Upon the death of Micajah "Big" Harpe in Kentucky, Wiley "Little" Harpe went into hiding and their women were apprehended and taken to the Russellville, Kentucky state courthouse and later released. Sally Rice Harpe went back to Knoxville, Tennessee to live in her father's house.

For a time, Susan Wood Harpe and Maria Davidson (aka Betsey Roberts Harpe) lived in Russellville. Susan Wood remarried later, and died in Tennessee. According to Ralph Harrelson, a McLeansboro, Illinois historian, records show that on September 27, 1803, Betsey Roberts remarried, moved with her husband to Canada in 1828, had many children, and eventually the couple died in the 1860s.

Cave-In-Rock historian, Otto A. Rothert, believed that Susan Wood died in Tennessee and her daughter went to Texas. According to the former sheriff of Hamilton County, Illinois, in 1820, Sally Rice, who had remarried, travelled with her husband and father to their new home in Illinois via the Cave-In-Rock ferry.

Descendants

After the atrocities committed by the Harpes, many members bearing the family name changed their name in some way, to hide the heritage of their infamous ancestors. The Harpes may have disguised their Tory past from their Patriot neighbors by changing their original name of "Harper," which was a common Loyalist name in Revolutionary War-era North Carolina. Some went by "Harp" merely removing the final "E" in Harpe, but leaving the pronunciation the same. Others changed the name significantly. Wyatt Earp is a famous example said - though unconfirmed - to have been a member of the Harpe family. There are still descendants of the family today, including those who have changed their surname back to the original spelling.

Appearances in literature, stage, television, and film

The Harpe saga was explored in depth by noted historian Paul I. Wellman in his book Spawn of Evil, now no longer in print.

E. Don Harpe, perhaps the only Harpe descendant to openly acknowledge and write about the Harpe brothers, currently, has two books born wolf DIE WOLF The Last Rampage of the Terrible Harpes and Resurrection: Rebirth of the Terrible Harpes with a third book being written. His short work, The True Story of America's First Serial Killers, may be as close to the truth about the story of the Harpes as has been written.

A graphic novel was written in 2009 by Chad Kinkle and illustrated by Adam Show called Harpe America's First Serial Killers.

The Harpe brothers, identified as "Big Harp" and "Little Harp" are among the characters in the stage musical The Robber Bridegroom, adapted by Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman from the novel by Eudora Welty. In this musical, Big Harp has already been decapitated at the beginning of the story, but his disembodied head is still alive: the head is portrayed by an actor whose body is concealed behind the scenery. Robert Hayden's poem "Theory of Evil" takes the Harpe brothers' crimes, and Big Harpe's demise, as its explicit subject.

In the 1941 film version of The Devil and Daniel Webster, both Harpes are among the jury the Devil calls, but do not appear in the original story. Big and Little Harpe appeared in Disneyland's Davy Crockett miniseries. Both Harpes and their decedents play a key role in the Silver John book The Voice Of The Mountain by Manly Wade Wellman, though their real-life accounts were fictionalize and morphed into more supernatural abilities. The Harpe brothers were the inspiration for Big and Little Drum in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife:Passage.

Harpe brothers

Wikipedia

Micajah "Big" Harpe, born Joshua Harper (before 1768 (probably, c. 1748) – August 1799) and Wiley "Little" Harpe, born William Harper (before 1770 (probably, c. 1750) – February 8, 1804), were serial killers, murderers, highwaymen, and river pirates, who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi, in the late eighteenth century.

The Harpes' crimes appear to have been motivated more by blood lust than financial gain. They are most likely the United States' first known serial killers, reckoned from the colonial era forward. The Harpe Brothers are credited with having killed thirty-nine people, and may have killed as many as fifty.

Early life

It is difficult to differentiate the facts about the Harpe Brothers from the later legends of their exploits.

The Harpes were born in Orange County, North Carolina to Scottish parents. Micajah was probably born in or before 1768 and Wiley in or before 1770. It is possible they were actually first cousins named Joshua and William Harper who later took the alias Harpe and emigrated from Scotland in 1759 or 1760. According to this theory their fathers were brothers, John and William Harper, who settled in Orange County, North Carolina, between 1761 and 1763.

Prior to the American Revolution, their fathers may also have been North Carolina Regulators, involved in the War of the Regulation or "Regulator War". This occurred between 1765 and 1771, opposing the continuing royal government interference by colonial officials in the Province of North Carolina.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Harpes' fathers tried to join the Patriot American forces but were refused because of their earlier associations with British loyalists. The treatment of the Harper family by hostile Patriot neighbors may have contributed to Big and Little Harpe's feelings of persecution and their desire for revenge.

Big Harpe later traveled in the company of two women, Susan and Betsey/Betty Roberts, possibly sisters, both of whom bore him children. Little Harpe married Sally Rice, the daughter of a Baptist minister.

Around April or May 1775, the young Harper cousins left North Carolina and went to Virginia to find overseer jobs on a slave plantation.

Involvement in the American Revolutionary War and Indian Wars

Little is known of the Harpes' whereabouts at the outbreak of the American Revolution. According to the eyewitness account of Captain James Wood, they joined a Tory rape gang in North Carolina. These gangs took advantage of the war by raping, stealing, murdering, and burning and destroying property, especially farms of Patriot colonists. The Harpes' gang took part in the kidnapping of three teenage girls, with a fourth girl being rescued by Captain Wood.

Captain Wood's son was patriot soldier Frank Wood, who was the older brother of Susan Wood Harpe, later kidnapped and married by Micajah "Big" Harpe. Frank Wood claimed to have seen the Harpe brothers, serving "loosely" as Tory militia, at the Battle of Kings Mountain in October 1780, under British commander Major Patrick Ferguson. Later, the Harpes served under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion, at the Battles of Blackstocks in November 1780 and Cowpens in January 1781.

Following the decisive British defeat by Patriot-French forces at Yorktown in 1781, the Harpes left North Carolina, dispersing with their Indian allies, the Chickamauga Cherokees, to Tennessee villages west of the Appalachian Mountains.

On April 2, 1781, they joined war parties of four hundred Chickamauga to attack the Patriot frontier settlement of Bluff Station at Fort Nashborough (now Nashville, Tennessee), which would be assaulted by them again, on either July 20, 1788, or April 9, 1793.

On August 19, 1782, the Harpes accompanied a British-backed Chickamauga Cherokee war party to Kentucky at the Battle of Blue Licks where they helped to defeat an army of Patriot frontiersmen led by Daniel Boone.

During the Harpe brothers' early frontier period, among the Chickamauga Cherokee, they lived in the village of Nickajack, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, for approximately twelve or thirteen years. During this time, they kidnapped Maria Davidson and later Susan Wood and made them their women.

In 1794, the Harpes and their women abandoned their Indian habitation before Nickajack was destroyed in a raid by American settlers. The Harpe brothers would later relocate to Powell's Valley, around Knoxville, Tennessee, where they stole food and supplies from local pioneers. The whereabouts of the Harpes are unknown between the summer of 1795 and spring of 1797, but by spring they were dwelling in a cabin on Beaver's Creek near Knoxville.

The Harpes may have disguised their Tory past from their Patriot neighbors by changing their original name of "Harper," which was a common Loyalist name in Revolutionary War-era North Carolina.

On June 1, 1797, Wiley Harpe married Sarah Rice, which was recorded in the Knox County, Tennessee marriage records. Sometime during 1797, the Harpes would begin their trail of death in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois.

Atrocities and serial murders

The Harpes confessed to the killing of a confirmed thirty-nine people, but the estimated combined total (including unknown victims) may number more than fifty. What follows are the accounts of a few of the murders the two committed.

In 1797, the Harpes were living near Knoxville, Tennessee. They were driven from the town after being charged with stealing hogs and horses. They were also accused of murdering a man named Johnson, whose body was found in a river, covered in urine and ripped open, with the chest cavity filled and weighted down with stones. This became a regular corpse disposal method and signature characteristic of the Harpes' serial killings. They butchered anyone at the slightest provocation, even babies.

From Knoxville, the Harpes fled north into Kentucky. They entered the state on the Wilderness Road near the Cumberland Gap. They are believed to have murdered a peddler named Peyton, taking his horse and some of his goods.

In December, they murdered two travelers from Maryland. Next, a man named John Langford, who was traveling from Virginia to Kentucky, turned up dead and a local innkeeper pointed the authorities to the Harpes. The criminal pair was pursued, captured, and jailed in Danville, Kentucky, but they managed to escape. When a posse was sent after them, the young son of a man who assisted the authorities was found dead and mutilated in retaliation by the Harpes.

On April 22, 1799, Kentucky Governor James Garrard placed a three-hundred dollar reward on each of the Harpes' heads. Fleeing northward, the Harpes killed two men named Edmonton and Stump. When they were near the mouth of the Saline River in southern Illinois they came upon three men encamped there and killed them. The pair then made their way to Cave In The Rock in southern Illinois, a stronghold of the river pirate and criminal gang leader Samuel Mason. A posse had been aggressively pursuing them, but stopped just short of the cave on the opposite shore in Kentucky.

With their wives and three children in tow, the Harpes holed up with the Samuel Mason Gang, who preyed on slow-moving flatboats making their way along the Ohio River. While the Mason Gang could be ruthless, even they were appalled at the actions of the Harpes. After the murderous pair began to make a habit of taking travelers to the top of the bluff, stripping them naked, and throwing them off, the Mason Gang forced the Harpe brothers to leave.

The Harpes then returned to eastern Tennessee, where they continued their vicious murder spree. They killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Coffey in July 1798.

Soon more bodies were discovered, including those of William Ballard, who had been disemboweled and thrown in the Holton River; James Brassel, who had his throat viciously slashed and was discovered on Brassel's Knob; and John Tully. John Graves and his teenage son were found dead with their heads axed in south central Kentucky. In Logan County, the Harpes killed a little girl, a young slave, and an entire family they found asleep in their camp.

In August, a few miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, Big Harpe bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him, the only crime for which he would later confess genuine remorse.

That same month, a man named Trowbridge was found disemboweled in Highland Creek. When the Harpes were given shelter at the Stegall home in Webster County, the pair killed an overnight guest named Major William Love, as well as Mrs. Moses Stegall's four-month old baby boy, whose throat was slit when he cried. When Mrs. Stegall screamed at the sight of her infant being killed, she was also murdered.

Deaths

The Harpe killings continued in July 1799 as the two fled west to avoid a new posse, organized by John Leiper, which included the avenging husband and father Moses Stegall. While the pair was preparing to kill another settler named George Smith, the posse finally tracked them down on August 24, 1799.

The posse called for the Harpes to surrender; they attempted to flee. Micajah Harpe was shot in the leg and back by Leiper, who soon caught up with Big Harpe and pulled him from his horse, subduing the outlaw with a tomahawk in a scuffle. As he lay dying, Micajah Harpe confessed to twenty murders. When he was done, while Harpe was still conscious, Moses Stegall slowly cut off the outlaw's head. Later, the head was spiked on a pole (some accounts claim a tree) at a crossroads near the Moses Stegall Cabin still known as "Harpe's Head" or "Harpe's Head Road" along a modern-day highway in Webster County, Kentucky.

Wiley Harpe successfully escaped the confrontation and rejoined the Mason Gang pirates at Cave-in-The-Rock. Four years later Wiley Harpe may have been captured, along with the rest of the Mason Gang, but went unrecognized because he was using the alias of "John Setton" or "John Sutton." Both Harpe and Samuel Mason, the gang leader, escaped, but Mason was shot.

Afterwards, Little Harpe and another gang member, Peter Alston, who went by the name "James May," tried to claim the reward for Samuel Mason, although it is unclear whether Mason had died from the wounds sustained during the escape or whether Harpe had killed him. Either way, as they presented the head, Harpe and Alston were recognized as outlaws themselves and arrested. The two soon escaped but were quickly recaptured, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. In January 1804, Wiley Harpe and Peter Alston were executed. Their heads were cut off and placed high on stakes along the Natchez Trace as a warning to other outlaws.

Harpe women

According to Jon Musgrave, the Harpe women, after being freed from cohabitation with the brothers, led relatively respectable and normal lives. Upon the death of Micajah "Big" Harpe in Kentucky, the women were apprehended and taken to the Russellville, Kentucky state courthouse but later released. Sally Rice Harpe went back to Knoxville, Tennessee, to live in her father's house. For a time, Susan Wood Harpe and Maria Davidson (aka Betsey Roberts) lived in Russellville. Susan Wood remarried later, and died in Tennessee. Her daughter went to Texas.

On September 27, 1803, Betsey Roberts married John Huffstutler and lived as tenants on Colonel Butlers Plantation. They moved to Hamilton County, Illinois in 1828, and had many children; the couple eventually died in the 1860s. In 1820, Sally Rice, who had remarried, traveled with her husband and father to their new home in Illinois via the Cave-In-Rock Ferry.

Popular culture

The Harpe brothers were the inspiration for Big and Little Drum in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Passage. Wiley Harpe is also the subject of a song on Bob Frank and John Murry's 2006 album, World Without End.

In 2015, the Investigation Discovery series Evil Kin aired an episode about the Harpe brothers called "Something Wicked in the Woods."

In the 1941 film, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (or "All That Money Can Buy"), Big and Little Harpe are part of the "jury of the damned" that Daniel must convince in order to free Jabez Stone.

Frontier serial killers: The Harpes

By Jon Musgrave - American Weekend

October 23, 1988

Two centuries ago this fall a murder spree began stretching from the Cumberland Gap in westernmost Virginia to Cave-in-Rock and Potts Spring in southeastern Illinois.

During the next nine months the murderers killed at least 40 men, women and children on the frontier until a posse caught up with the killers and took the leader's head on Aug. 24, 1799. Known as the brothers Micajah and Wiley Harpe, the two started out life as first cousins William and Joshua Harpe both natives of Scotland who emigrated as young children with their parents, two brothers, who settled in Orange Co., North Carolina. In addition to their other aliases, frontier historians simply remembered them as Big and Little Harpe.

James Hall, a Philadelphia native and judge in Shawneetown during the 1820s, wrote the first histories about the characters. His introduction from his 1828 "Letters from the West" serves best for the story:

"Many years ago, two men, named Harpe, appeared in Kentucky, spreading death and terror wherever they went. Little else was known of them but that they passed for brothers, and came from the borders of Virginia. They had three women with them, who were treated as wives, and several children, with whom they traversed the mountainous and thinly settled parts of Virginia into Kentucky marking their course with blood. Their history is wonderful, as well from the number and variety, as the incredible atrocity of their adventures."

The nine-month spree began in the early Tennessee state capital of Knoxville. The Harpes and two of their women arrived there sometime between the summer of 1795 and the spring of 1797. They lived on a farm eight miles west of the village on Beaver Creek until late 1798, when a neighbor rightfully accused the Harpes of stealing his horses. The Harpes ran off, but the neighbors eventually caught up with them and the horses. As they made their way back to the capital, the Harpes escaped. For a while the neighbors pursued but eventually gave up.

Rather than hiding, that same night the Harpes returned to a "rowdy groggery" operated by a man named Hughes a few miles west of Knoxville. The Harpes had frequented the establishment before and knew the operator. Inside they found a man named Johnson for whom they were looking. He may have been the man who enlightened Harpes' neighbors about the horses' whereabouts. Why him will never be known. The Harpes took and killed him. Some days later a passerby found his body floating in the Holstein River, ripped open and filled with stones — a trademark of what would become a Harpe victim.

The Harpes got away with that murder, in part because authorities believed the establishment's owner and his brothers-in-law who were present that night had something to do with it. Meanwhile, the Harpes traveled eastward toward the Cumberland Gap to meet up with their wives. While traveling the Wilderness Road they killed twice more, the first time a pair of Marylander travelers named Paca and Bates. The second time occurred on Dec. 13, with a young Virginian named Langford, a man foolish enough to travel the wilderness alone and show off his silver coin in too many inns.

Like Johnson, they failed to dispose of the body well enough and passing drovers discovered it a couple of days later. Almost immediately the nearby innkeeper recognized the body and figured out the culprits. A posse gathered and the chase began. On Christmas Day, 1799, they caught the Harpes and imprisoned them in Stanford, Ky. A preliminary hearing on Jan. 4, found enough evidence for a trial and ordered that the prisoners be taken to the district court at Danville, Ky.

For the next two months the Harpes plotted their escape which came on March 16. They left the women in the jail for practical reasons — all three were pregnant. By the time the district court freed the women in April, all three had given birth, each child two months apart in age.

After their escape the Harpes continued their murderous spree. In late March or early April they killed a man near the future site of Edmonton followed by another murder on the Barren River eight miles below Bowling Green. On April 10, they killed the 13-year-old son of Col. Daniel Trabue who lived three miles west of present Columbia, Ky. Ironically, posse members chasing the Harpes were at Trabue's house urging him to join the chase then they discovered Trabue's son missing and believed him abducted by the Harpes.

From the Trabue home, the Harpes continued towards Cave-in-Rock by way of Red Banks (now Henderson, Ky.), Diamond Island and Potts Spring in Illinois. Meanwhile the Danville court acquitted one of the Harpe women, forced a mistrial on the second and convicted a third during trials on April 15. The judge offered a new trial to the one woman convicted and the attorney general decided four days later not to re-try her. With their freedom once again theirs, the women left the jail and headed for Cave-in-Rock where a messenger had told them to meet their men.

On April 22, the governor of Kentucky issued a $300 reward for the capture of the Harpes. During this time, the extent of outlawry in the western portion of Kentucky, especially in the Ohio River counties from the Green River on down, spurred the local militias into action.

Under a Capt. Young, they drove the outlaws out of Mercer County, then crossed the Green into Henderson County where they killed 12 or 13 outlaws and pushed the rest downriver. They continued their law and order sweep until they reached the Tradewater River and Flin's Ferry at its mouth. Cave-in-Rock lay just beyond and Capt. Mason's pirates prepared for the attack that never came. Instead the pirates welcomed fleeing outlaws and the Harpes seeking refuge.

Historians believe the Harpes spent less than a month in Illinois, but long enough for three or four murders. The first took place on their way to the cave. Hall wrote that in the 1820s, there were still persons in Shawneetown who could point out the spot on the Potts' Plantation near the mouth of the Saline River where the Harpes "shot two or three persons in cold blood by the fire where they had camped."

Hall did not say where on Potts' Plantation the men had camped, but a likely place would have been Potts' Spring, the same spring where the legendary Billy Potts killed his victims. The spring lies near the base of a south-facing bluff halfway on the trail between Flin's Ferry and the saltworks near Equality.

Upon reaching the cave the Harpes joined the pirates in the trade of their craft, attacking heavily laden flatboats traveling downriver with goods. After one such attack the pirates threw an impromptu celebration inside the cave. Seeing only survivor alive to tell the tale of the attack the Harpes developed a fiendish idea for entertainment. With the others drunk in their revelry the Harpes took the survivor up to the top of the cliff. They stripped him naked, tied him to a horse, blindfolded the horse and ran it off the cliff.

"Suddenly, the outlaws in the cave became aware of terrified screams, hoof beats, and the clatter of dislodged rocks. They ran out of the cave, they could see the horse's neck extended, its legs galloping frantically against the thin air, and tied to its back the naked, screaming prisoner, stark horror on his face. In an instant horse and man were dashed against the rocks," wrote W. D. Snively Jr. in his book "Satan's Ferryman."

The scene proved to the pirates that the Harpes had to go. They ordered them to leave and take their women and children. After that night in May 1799, the Harpes reign of terror quieted down for a while — or at least for a few weeks. By mid July they began their final race toward death. In quick succession they killed a farmer named Bradbury about 25 miles west of Knoxville and another man named Hardin about three miles downstream from that city.

On July 22 they murdered the young son of Chesley Coffey on Black Oak Ridge eight miles northwest of Knoxville. Two days later they struck William Ballard, also a few miles away from Knoxville.

On July 29, they came across James and Robert Brassel on the road near Brassel's Knob. Pretending to be posse members looking for the Harpes, the Harpes turned against the Brassels, accusing them of being the notorious outlaws. Robert escaped and went for help. With him gone, the Harpes beat James to death. As they headed toward Kentucky they killed another man, John Tully around the beginning of August in what is now Clinton County, Ky. Then in an almost daily attacks the Harpes murdered John Graves and his son and finally the families and servants of two Trisword brothers who were encamped on the trail about eight miles from modern-day Adairville, Ky.

Also during this period they killed a young black boy going to a mill and a young white girl. A few miles northeast of Russellville, Ky., Big Ha rpe even killed one of his own children, or his brother's child.

At Russellville the Harpes threw their various pursuers off the track tempting to them travel a false trail southward back into Tennessee. Instead, the Harpes continued northward to Henderson County. During the first or second week of August they found a cabin on Canoe Creek about eight miles south of Henderson and rented it. A failed attack on a neighbor aroused suspicion, but a week of surveillance on the Harpe cabin failed to convince the locals of the renters' true identities as the Harpes.

While spies watched the Harpe men at the cabin, the Harpe women traveled elsewhere in the area collecting supplies and old debts. After a week of surveillance, the spies give up the job on Aug. 20.

The following day, the Harpes left to meet their wives at a rendezvous. While riding good horses that morning, they met up with James Tompkins, a local resident. Tompkins had not met the men before and believed their tale of being itinerant preachers. The local man invited them home for the midday supper where Big Harpe presided over with a more than adequate meal blessing.

Ironically, during the conversation, Tompkins admitted that he had no more powder for his gun. In a show of charity Big Harpe poured a teacup full from his powder horn. Three days later that powder would be used to shoot Big Harpe in the back as he tried to escape.

Leaving Tompkins' place in peace, the Harpes traveled on to the house of Silas McBee, a local justice of the peace, but because of McBee's aggressive guard dogs, decided against an attack. Instead they traveled to the home of an acquaintance, Moses Stegall. Moses wasn't home, but his wife offered them a bed to sleep in as long as they didn't mind a third man, Maj. William Love, who had arrived earlier. They accepted, but later that night murdered Love, Mrs. Stegall and the Stegall's four-month-old baby boy. In the morning they burned down the house hoping to attract the attention of McBee.

The smoke attracted McBee and a number of others. By the next morning the posse grew to include seven local residents, including Stegall. All day they followed the Harpes' trail. At night they camped and started again the next morning, Aug. 24, on the trail. While chasing the Harpes they discovered two more victims of the men killed a few days before.

They soon found the Harpes' camp with only Little Harpe's wife present. She pointed the way Big Harpe and the other two women went. About two miles away, they caught up with Big Harpe and called for his surrender. Instead, he sped away leaving the women. Four of the posse members shot at Harpe, one hit him in the leg. John Leiper missed and then borrowed Tompkins gun for a second shot. Leiper then spurred his horse forward to catch up with Big Harpe.

Knowing that there hadn't been enough time for Leiper to reload his weapon, Harpe turned and took careful aim at Leiper. Then, using Tompkins' gun containing the powder given him by Harpe just days before, Leiper fired his second round towards Harpe, entering his backbone and damaging the spinal cord.

Harpe continued riding down the trail losing more blood every minute. The posse caught up with him and pulled him from his horse without resistance. Begging for water, Leiper took one of Harpe's shoes and filled it full of water for him.

Harpe confessing his sins pulled Stegall over the edge. He took Harpe's own butcher knife and slowly cut off the outlaw's head. Placed in a saddlebag, the posse eventually put it in a tree where the road from Henderson forked in two directions, one to Marion and Eddyville and the other to Madisonville and Russellville. For years, the intersection took the name Harpe's Head.

The Harpe reign of terror had ended — almost. Little Harpe escaped and eventually rejoined Capt. Mason's band of river pirates at Cave-in-Rock. Four years later, Little Harpe and a fellow pirate named May turned on Mason and took his head in for the reward money. Presenting the head and a tall tale explaining how they did it, they took the reward money and started to leave. Just then, someone arrived in the crowd, a victim of an earlier flatboat attack, and recognized Harpe and May as outlaws. Authorities immediately arrested them, but they soon escaped.

On the run again, a posse caught up with them and brought them to justice where they were tried, sentenced, hung. And just for good measure, had their heads cut off and placed high on stakes along the Natchez Road as a warning to other outlaws.

How the Harpes got their start

The story of Big Harpe and his brother may end at Harpe's Head for practical purposes, but it certainly begins further back in time than their flight from Knoxville nine months earlier.

Only one historian, Otto A. Rothert, pieced together all of the stories about the Harpes' murderous spree in his 1924 book, "The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock." Since reprinted by Southern Illinois University Press, his book offers the most comprehensive collection of stories about the pair.

During the recent shooting of scenes for a documentary to be shown on The History Channel, the book practically served as the production company's bible. At the very least, it served in place of a detailed script. When a question would arise about a character's movement, someone would grab the book and open it to the appropriate page.

However, Rothert doesn't focus on the what led up to the Harpes' outlaw years. In fact, only one author ever did in detail. T. Marshall Smith published his "Legends of the War of Independence" in 1855. Focusing on the lesser known stories and characters in the southern and western theaters of the Revolutionary War, Smith claims the Harpes as pro-British fighters at the Battle of King's Mountain and other skirmishes.

Rothert dismissed Smith's claims in his book, noting that Smith "cites no authority for his various statements," although he did admit that Smith claimed in his preface to have heard the stories from old pioneers. While there are problems with Smith's book — mainly omissions of major events during the last few years of Big Harpe's life including Little Harpe's marriage — Smith did tell his readers where he got his information.

Rothert noted that he used pages 318 to 377 of Smith's book. If that's all, then he simply missed a lot of information about the family that literally starts on the first page of the first chapter.

An old Revolutionary War soldier named Frank Wood provided much of the information to Smith about the Harpes' activity during the war. Wood served at the Battle of King's Mountain when only 18. He should have been able to provide reliable information considering he personally saw Big Harpe at three battles. Unlike other Tories who fought for the British and raided the patriot farms, Wood had adequate reason to remember Big Harpe, for about nine months after King's Mountain, Big Harpe kidnapped Frank's younger sister Susan.

Smith's sources also included his grandfather and from two of the Harpe women. His grandfather heard the story from Wood himself just weeks after the kidnapping. Both women had heard about the Harpes from their fathers, even before their kidnappings.

Smith starts his story with John and William Harpe, the brothers who were fathers to the younger outlaw Harpes. The two immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1759 or 1760 and settled in Orange County, N.C., sometime during the period of 1761 to 1763.

No one has fully examined the facts in Smith's book, but a quick check on the Internet of the USGenWeb archives for Orange County found a John and William Harper on a 1779 tax roll, which may be close enough considering the lack of consistent spellings during that period. Also, the same Internet archive showed a John Davidson as a signer on a Regulator petition in 1768. Smith starts his book with a conversation between the elder set of Harpes and a John Davidson, Maria's father and a Regulator fighting the British governor during the late 1760s and early 1770s.

In late April or early May 1775, the young Harpes left home to try their luck in getting jobs overseeing slaves in Virginia. At this point the Harpes are either 20 and 18, or 15 and 13. Smith makes the same reference to their age in two different parts of the book five years apart. For this trip they stole at least one horse from the neighborhood of the Wood residence. For the next five years, their exact whereabouts are unknown, except that they took part in the Tory gangs that terrorized their patriot or Whig neighbors.

During the Revolutionary War, semi-outlaw groups from both Tory and patriot sides roamed the no-man land between the American and British positions. These bands, particularly the Tory ones in Smith's book, saw the war as an opportunity to rape, pillage and burn without abandon their neighbors who may have been on the other side.

He reported by name three kidnappings of young women by Tory rape gangs operating in North Carolina. Frank's father, Capt. James Wood, successfully interrupted the attempted kidnapping of a fourth teen, shooting and wounding Little Harpe, one of the five attackers.

During 1780 as the British refocused their campaign on the South, they officially recognized and admitted these Tory irregulars and Cherokee allies into their ranks. On Oct. 7, the Americans attacked the a large portion of the British Army in the South at King's Mountain, near the border between the Carolinas. The younger Wood shot at Big Harpe but missed during the battle.

After the battle — a defeat for the British — the Harpes briefly visited their fathers' neighborhood. However, they didn't stay there long, Wood also recalled facing Big Harpe in battle on Nov. 20 at the Battle of Blackstocks and again on Jan. 16-17, 1781, at the Battle of the Cowpens in South Carolina.

"On three occasions I saw him after that [Blackstocks], and twice we meet in battle. He was, as you know, belonging to [Lt. Banastre] Tarleton's command, and I with Gen. [Daniel] Morgan. At the battle of the Cowpens I saw him, and I am sure he saw me. But he managed to keep out of my way till we 100 and took prisoners to the number of 500 red British and Tories. But again big Bill got off with the retreat of Tarleton," recalled Woods years after the battle.

Shortly after that, the Harpes left the British Army to go back with the Cherokees to their villages west of the Appalachians. During that trip they took part in the attack on Bluff Station (Fort Nashborough) at the present side of Nashville, Tenn., on April 1. Four hundred Cherokees took part in the raid.

Nashville historians recalled a Capt. James Leiper among those who died in the assault. Leiper may have been a relative to the John Leiper who shot Big Harpe 18 years later. According to statements made after Big Harpe's death, John Leiper and Harpe knew and distinctively disliked each other.

After the raid, the Harpes did not stay with the Cherokee's long. About the first week of June they kidnapped Maria Davidson. A week later they took Susan Wood. After rendezvousing at a hunter's cabin on the east side of the mountains, the Harpes, their captive and brutalized women, and four assistants crossed the mountains.

During the 20 day trip to the Cherokee-Chickamauga town of Nickjack located southwest of modern-day Chattanooga, the Harpes managed to find time to kill Moses Doss. Big Harpe apparently found a problem with Doss' over-concern for the women's well being. For the next 12 to 13 years the women and the Harpes stayed in the Indian village.

Twice each of the captive women became pregnant, and twice each the Harpes murdered their children.

When the British surrendered at Yorktown, not all fighting ceased. Groups of Indians including the Chickamaugas, a break-away band of Cherokee, continued to make war on the pioneers in the settlements west of the mountains. As guests in their village, the Harpes often followed them on the warpath, including the Battle of Blue Licks on Aug. 19, 1782, when a large group of British-backed Indians defeated an army of Kentuckians. They again joined the Indians in an attack on Bledsoe's Lick in Tennessee, either on July 20, 1788, or April 9, 1793, dates of two major attacks on the settlement.

Finally, the Americans successfully took the offensive and struck back wiping out Nickajack in September 1794. Somehow, the Harpes found out about the attack through their white contacts and secreted their women out of the village the night before the battle. Taking their wives on a nearly two-day journey, they found a new camp where the women stayed for nine months. During which the Harpes pillaged and foraged in the more settled portions of Tennessee such as Powell's Valley close nearer to Knoxville.

From the summer of 1795 through the spring of 1797, historians don't know much about the Harpes' whereabouts. However, they did manage to move into a cabin on Beaver's Creek near Knoxville at least by the spring of 1797. On June 1, of that year Little Harpe married Sarah Rice, a local girl. The Knox County marriage records verify that tradition. Just over a year later, the Harpes would begin their murder spree.

What happened to the women?

Following Big Harpe's death, the posse chasing the Harpes took the three women to the court in Russellville. Eventually freed and released, the youngest wife, Sally (Rice) Harpe returned to her father's home in the Knoxville area.

The other two, Susan (Wood) Harpe and Maria Davidson, who continued to use her alibi of Betsey Roberts, stayed in the Russellville area for awhile living normal respectable lives. A few months after Little Harpe lost his head after turning in Mason's, Betsey married John Huffstutler on Sept. 27, 1803. By 1828, they had moved to Hamilton County, Ill., where they raised a large family and lived until their deaths in the 1860s, according to McLeansboro historian Ralph Harrelson.

Sally later remarried as well, and like Betsey moved to, or at least through, Illinois. In 1820, the former sheriff of Logan County, Ky., who cared for the women after the death of Big Harpe, saw Sally as they crossed the ferry at Cave-in-Rock. Sally, with her new husband and father in tow, were traveling to their new home.

Susan died in Tennessee and Rothert believed her daughter eventually moved to Texas.

IllinoisHistory.com

The Vicious Harpes - First American Serial Killers

Kathy Weiser - Legendsofamerica.com

Earning the dubious distinction of being the United States’ first known serial killers, Micajah "Big" Harpe and Wiley "Little" Harpe were murderous outlaws who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois and Mississippi in the late 1700's. Often referred to as the Harpe Brothers, they were actually cousins who often passed themselves off as brothers.

Both of their fathers were Scottish immigrants who had settled in Orange County, North Carolina. Micajah Harpe was born to John Harpe and his wife, while Wiley Harpe, who was actually named Joshua, was born to John’s brother, William and his wife. Soon after the arrival of the Harpes in America, they changed the spelling of their original name from “Harpe” to “Harp.”

Growing up near each other, the boys soon took up the nicknames of Big and Little Harp, as Wiley was much smaller than Micajah. The two left North Carolina in 1775 for Virginia intending to find jobs as slave overseers; however, the American Revolution interrupted their career.

The pair sided with the British, but their interest seemed to be more in violence and criminal activities than any sense of patriotic duty. Along with other like-minded irregulars, they apparently thrilled in the activities of burning farms, raping women, and pillaging the American patriots. When Little Harp attempted to rape a girl in North Carolina, he was shot and wounded by Captain James Wood; however, he survived.

In 1780, the Harpes joined with the regular British troops and fought in several battles along the North and South Carolina borders. The next year, they left the army and joined up with a group of Cherokee Indians, raiding settlements in North Carolina and Tennessee and continuing their pillaging. Taking revenge on Captain James Wood, who had earlier wounded Little Harpe, the pair kidnapped his daughter, Susan Wood, and another girl named Maria Davidson. The women served as wives to the Harpes.

The pair, along with the brutalized women and four other men, then began to make their way to Tennessee. During the trip, a man named Moses Doss had the “audacity” to be over-concerned for the brutalized women. For his concern, he was killed by the Harpes.

The group then settled in the Cherokee-Chickamauga village of Nickajack located southwest of modern-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. For the next dozen years, the Harpes, along with their “wives” lived in the Indian village. During this time, both of the captive women became pregnant twice and their children were killed by their fathers.

After the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the Chickamauga and a break-away band of Cherokee continued to make war on American patriots and the Harpes were only too willing to help them, fighting in the Battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky on August 19, 1782 and other smaller skirmishes.

In September, 1794, the Americans planned to take the offensive against the Indians at Nickajack, but somehow, the Harpes got wind of the attack and fled before the patriots wiped out the village. The Harpes and their women then settled down at a new camp nearby, where they stayed for the next nine months, once again pillaging local villages in Tennessee. By the spring of 1797, they were living in a cabin on Beaver's Creek near Knoxville. That same year, Little Harpe married a local girl; a minister’s daughter, named Sarah Rice, and the other two women became the “wives” of Big Harpe.

Just over a year later, in late 1798, the Harpes would begin their murder spree, one of the most violent in the nation’s history.They first killed two men in Tennessee, one in Knox County and one on the Wilderness Trail. By December, they had moved on to Kentucky, where they killed two traveling men from Maryland. Unlike most outlaws of the time, they seemed to be more motivated by blood lust than financial gain, often leaving their victims disemboweled, filling their abdominal cavities with rocks, and sinking them in a river.

Next, a man named John Langford, who was traveling from Virginia to Kentucky, turned up dead and a local innkeeper pointed the authorities to the Harpes. The criminal pair was then pursued, captured, and jailed in Danville, Kentucky, but they managed to escape. When a posse was sent after them, the young son of a man who assisted the authorities, was found dead and mutilated.

On April 22, 1799, the Kentucky Governor issued a $300 reward on each of the Harpe heads. Fleeing northward, the Harpes killed two men named Edmonton and Stump. When they were near the mouth of the Saline River, they came upon three men who were encamped, and killed all three. The pair then made their way to Cave-In-The-Rock in southern Illinois, a stronghold of the river pirate, Samuel Mason. In the meantime, the posse was aggressively pursuing them, but unfortunately, stopped just short of Cave-in-The-Rock.

Along with their wives and three children in tow, the Harpes holed up with the Samuel Mason Gang, who preyed on slow-moving flatboats making their way along the Ohio River. However; though the Mason Gang could be ruthless, even they were appalled at the actions of the Harpes. After the murderous pair began to make a habit of taking travelers to the top of the bluff, stripping them naked, and throwing them off, they were asked to leave.

The Harpes then returned to Eastern Tennessee, where they continued their vicious murder spree in earnest. In July, 1798, they killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Coffey. Soon, more bodies were discovered including William Ballard, who had been disemboweled and thrown in the Holton River, James Brassel, who had his throat viciously slashed was discovered on Brassel’s Knob, and another man named John Tully was also found murdered.

In south central Kentucky, John Graves and his teenaged son were found dead with their heads axed and in Logan County; the Harpes killed a little girl, a young slave, and an entire family who were asleep in their camp. In August, a few miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, Big Harpe killed his daughter, by bashing her head against a tree, because the baby was crying.

That same month a man named Trowbridge was found disemboweled in Highland Creek and when they were given shelter at the Stegall home in Webster County, the pair killed an overnight guest named Major William Love, as well as Mrs. Stegall’s four-month old baby boy, whose throat was slit when it cried. When Mrs. Stegall screamed at the sight of her infant being killed, she too, was murdered.

The killings continued as the Harpes fled west to avoid the posse, which included Moses Stegall, whose family the Harpes had killed earlier in the month. While the pair was preparing to kill another settler named George Smith, the posse finally tracked them down on August 24, 1799. Calling for their surrender, the two sped away, but, Big Harpe was shot in the leg and the back. The posse soon caught up with him and pulled him from his horse. As he lay dying, he confessed to 20 murders and Mr. Stegall slowly cut off the outlaw’s head while he was still conscious. Later it was hanged on a pole at a crossroads near Henderson, Kentucky. For years, the intersection where the pole stood was called Harpe's Head.

In the meantime, Little Harpe escaped and soon rejoined the Mason Gang pirates at Cave-in-The-Rock. Four years later, Little Harpe was using the alias of John Setton. When a large reward was offered for the head of their leader, Samuel Mason, Harpe, along with a fellow pirate named James May, killed Mason and cut off his head to collect the money.

However, as they presented the head, they were recognized as outlaws themselves and arrested. The two soon escaped but, were quickly recaptured, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. In January, 1804, they were executed and their heads cut off and placed high on stakes along the Natchez Road as a warning to other outlaws.

During their terrible crime spree the Harpes killed more than 40 men, women and children.

But, what happened to the three "wives" of the notorious Harpes?

On the day that Big Harpe was killed in August, 1799, the women were left at the camp. The three women, each having one child, were taken to Henderson and placed in an empty block house. On September 4th, all three were charged with being parties to the murders of Mary Stegall, her infant son, James, and Captain William Love. They were bound over for trial in Russellville, but were tried and released in October.

Sally Rice Harpe then returned to the Knoxville area to be with her father. She later married a highly respected man and raised a large family.

Susan Wood stayed in the Russellville area, where she lived a respectable life. She died in Tennessee.

Maria Davidson, who was by then going by the alias of Betsy Roberts, married a man named John Huffstutler in September, 1803. By 1828, they had moved to Hamilton County, Illinois, where they raised a large family and lived until their deaths in the 1860s.

After the atrocities committed by the Harpes, many family members changed their names so they wouldn’t be connected with the violent murderers.

Big Harpe and The Witch Dance

With the violence surrounding the vicious Harpes, it comes as no surprise that there is a ghostly legend attached to the notorious Micajah "Big" Harpe. In addition to terrorizing the states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois, the Harpes were often known to have traveled along the Natchez Trace through Mississippi. Between Tupelo and Houston, Mississippi, there is a place called Witch Dance. Steeped in mystery for centuries, it was not only the home of the Mound Builders of Mississippi, but was also said to have been used by a coven of witches who would gather for for nighttime ceremonies. Lore has it, that where ever the witches' feet touched the ground during their dances, the grass would wither and die, never to grow again.

At some point prior to his death, Big Harpe was traveling along the Natchez Trace with an Indian guide who showed him the bare spots in the ground and told him of the legend of the Witch Dance. Big Harpe only scoffed at this and began to leap from spot to spot, daring the witches to come out and fight him. Of course, nothing happened, at least not then.

Eventually, Big Harpe made his way back to Kentucky, where he was tracked down by the posse in August, 1799. After he was decapitated and his head placed in the tree, the skull was said to have been removed by a witch, ground into powder and used as a potion to heal a relative. Word soon got around and when travelers retold the story along the Trace, they would swear they could hear crackling laughter coming from the nearby bushes and trees.