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THE OUTLAWS
OF
CAVE-IN-ROCK

Cave-in-Rock

(From an original oil painting by J. Bernhard Alberts, made in 1916)

THE OUTLAWS OF
CAVE-IN-ROCK

Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen
and River Pirates who operated in
Pioneer Days upon the Ohio
and Mississippi rivers
and over the old
Natchez Trace

by
Otto A. Rothert
Secretary, The Filson Club

The Arthur H. Clark Company
Cleveland: 1924

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
OTTO A. ROTHERT

All Rights Reserved

TO MY FRIEND
YOUNG E. ALLISON

Contents

Illustrations

The Purpose of this Narrative

This book is intended to give the authentic story of the famous Cave-in-Rock of the lower Ohio River, as collected from historic and romantic sources, and to present verified accounts of the most notorious of those highwaymen and river pirates who in the early days of the middle West and South filled the Mississippi basin with the alarm and terror of their crimes and exploits.

All the criminals herein treated made their headquarters at one time or another in this famous cavern. It became a natural, safe hiding-place for the pirates who preyed on the flatboat traffic before the days of steamboats. It came also to serve the same purpose for highwaymen infesting the old Natchez Trace and other land trails north and south.

A century ago and more, its rock-ribbed walls echoed the drunken hilarity of villains and witnessed the death struggles of many a vanished man. Today this former haunt of criminals is as quiet as a tomb. Nothing is left in the Cave to indicate the outrages that were committed there in the olden days.

One state historian of our own times—Parrish, of Illinois—thus describes it: “The gruesome spot, which in those old border days witnessed many a scene of revelry and bloodshed, is today no more than a curiosity, its past victims, white and black, forgotten. Just below it, where, in 1801, there stood one lone cabin, there is today a thrifty village.” In a sense the victims have been forgotten; yet they survive in the true stories of such of them as the preserved records can be made to disclose.

The story of the Harpes is more than that of mere criminals. They were arch-criminals among criminals, apparently loving murder for its own sake. There was a time when the whole of Kentucky and Tennessee was terrorized at the possibility of their appearance at any hour in any locality. Samuel Mason (or Meason) the Wilsons, and others, measured up more nearly to the standard of true highwaymen and pirates. If they had lived in England their careers would have closed on Tyburn Hill or at the rope’s end on “Execution Dock.” The stories of James Ford show that his real classification must forever remain largely a mystery.

Any history of these outlaws would doubtless be looked upon as wild fiction unless the statements were carefully verified by court records and contemporary newspaper notices, and the records of early writers who gathered the facts regarding them when these facts were told by men and women who lived at the time the atrocities were committed. The adage that “truth is stranger than fiction” is exemplified fully in their careers.

The lives and exploits of these men constitute an important phase in pioneer life because their deeds greatly affected the settlement of the new country. Dread of them brought peaceful settlers together in communities and helped to hasten the establishment of law and order. Their histories are therefore a part of the history of the country. The historian who passes them over as mere blood-and-thunder tales misses entirely one of the high lights in the great adventure of the settling of the Mississippi basin.

Owing to the sparse population and the great distances between settlements in the West, the early accounts of these criminals and their crimes were subject to change and to the effects of terrorizing rumor. In time the deeds of one would be attributed to another, and the circumstances of one crime confounded with others. In the main, however, tradition preserved a generally consistent story. Here and there men like James Hall and the editors of early newspapers preserved accounts of them and so blazed the way to court records and approximated the dates for private archives to be consulted. The pages that follow contain the result of years of patient investigation of these records and of archives that have never been published.

Numbers in brackets inserted in the text refer to the authorities as numbered in the bibliography.

Otto A. Rothert

Louisville, Kentucky, March 17, 1923.

The Lair of the Outlaws

Nature has set her own seal of wonder and immortality upon some of her works. The cavern of Cave-in-Rock, on the northern bank of the lower Ohio River, bears such a seal. Lacking the adventitious aids of immensity, depth, and remoteness, it was regarded with religious interest in the vague traditions of the aborigines, and has excited the curiosity, aroused the imagination and stirred the fear of white men since they first discovered it. The Cave has been at once noted and notorious, famous and infamous, and it remains today, through all the changing years and diversities of its use, actual or attributed, practically unchanged, still challenging curiosity, surprise, fear, and admiration.

The scenery above and below the Cave attracted the attention of the earliest western travelers. Much deforestation has taken place during the past century, but the landscapes along the banks of that section of the Ohio stand today, as they did in the olden days, unsurpassed by any other along the river’s course. The mouth of the Cave is in a high bluff overlooking the Ohio, which is the central link in a chain of majestic landscapes. It seems almost a paradox that a spot so beautified by nature should have been made the headquarters of outlaws, and the scene of much that was hideous in crime.

Pioneers in the West were likely at any time to encounter wild animals or to be forced to battle with plundering or revenge-seeking Indians. Whether traveling overland trails or upon navigable streams, the first-comers in the middle West were always in danger of highway robbers or river pirates. The cruelest of all highwaymen were the Harpes and the shrewdest of the river pirates were the Masons.

Cave-in-Rock’s history as a rendezvous of outlaws does not begin until about 1795. The date of the discovery by white men has not been ascertained. The earliest record found is in The History of New France, by Charlevoix, in 1744. It includes Bellin’s Map of Louisiana presenting the general course of the Ohio, drawn from observations made by M. de Lery. When this explorer came down the river in 1729 he noted the location of the Cave by referring to it as “Caverne dans le Roc.” After 1778 it is indicated on many English and American maps. Early travelers designated it by various names, each of which, except “House of Nature,” contained the word “cave.” Since 1800, Cave-in-Rock has been practically the only name applied.

The early French called the Ohio “La Belle Riviere.” In the days of primeval forests it was one of the most beautiful streams in the world. Evidences of its former grandeur are nowhere so well retained as in the neighborhood of Cave-in-Rock. The last of the giants of the forests standing on the bluffs and in the bottoms along the river will some day disappear, but Cave-in-Rock will defy time and its changes, and ever stand as a reminder of the days when wilderness was king.

Cave-in-Rock is in Hardin County, Illinois, about twenty miles below Shawneetown and twenty miles above Golconda, or about eighty-five miles below Evansville, Indiana, and fifty miles above Paducah, Kentucky. It is about two and one-half miles below Ford’s Ferry and a half mile above the village of Cave-in-Rock. Its position commands a long view up and down the Ohio River. It has a large and dark tunnel-like opening extending into a gray limestone bluff which is partly hidden by shrubbery and small trees. Whether one sees it while passing in a boat or approaching it from the shore the view invariably stirs the beholder. It has the appearance of a large arched crypt, imbedded in solid rock. It is a “house” built by Nature, and is as solid as Gibraltar. It is sphynx-like in its silence, and bewilders those who enter.

The mouth is an arched opening, semi-elliptical in form, about fifty-five feet wide at the base. The cavern extends back horizontally one hundred and sixty feet with an almost uniform width of forty feet. The walls and roof, which change to more or less of an ellipse near the mouth, again change near the center into a semi-ellipse and retain that curvature to the end. The ceiling is horizontal throughout its length, while the floor, beginning about seventy-five feet from the entrance, gradually inclines upward toward the rear, and at the extreme end comes within a few feet of the arched ceiling. At this end there is a hole large enough to permit a man to climb out into a sinkhole in the surface above. The upward incline of the floor in the rear is due to a deposit of earth, washed there during the past half-century by water coming down through the sinkhole during heavy rains. Near the middle of the ceiling are two perpendicular crevices with an average width of less than a foot, extending across and beyond the Cave, and upward to within about fifteen feet of the surface of the cliff. One of these narrow crevices has, near the center, a chimney-like opening sufficiently large to admit a man. It leads to a rough-walled enlargement about four feet wide and ten feet high. This small place is known as the “upper cave,” and has a history and fiction of its own.

In the lower part of what may be designated the lower lip of the mouth-like opening is a large, level, wedge-shaped space about five feet lower than the floor of the Cave. At its outer extremity this wedge-shaped space is almost as wide as the mouth itself, but rapidly tapers inward to a width of about four feet. It then continues back into the mouth about twenty-five feet through the solid rock, in the form of an excavated channel or passage about three and one-half feet wide. This narrow channel, about five feet deep at the beginning, inclines upward until it reaches the general level of the floor of the Cave. The top of the rock on either side of the excavation is level and resembles a platform. These two platforms or stage-like floors extend inward and, like the inclined passage, soon reach the general level of the Cave. This excavated channel and the part of the wedge-shaped space from which it leads may have been made by men, but whether by Indians or early whites is not known. It may possibly be the result of erosion.

At a normal stage of the river the mouth of the Cave is, measured in the perpendicular, about half-way between the top of the bluff and the water’s edge. In spring the river frequently comes up to within a few feet of the opening. When the water is extremely high it enters; during great floods there is ample depth to row a skiff the entire length of the Cave.

Such is Cave-in-Rock today, and such it was in pioneer times, except that in the rear a deposit of earth had not been washed in, and that large trees, which stood in front of the mouth and hid or partly concealed it, have long since disappeared. It was an ideal lair for river outlaws; it furnished shelter and gave them every advantage over passing travelers.

Interior of Cave-in-Rock

showing entire interior of cave and entrance to small upper cave

(From a drawing by J. Bernhard Alberts, made in 1916)

In March, 1766, John Jennings, a Philadelphia merchant, going down the Ohio with a cargo of goods for Fort de Chartres, Illinois, notes in his Journal that he stopped for an hour near “a large rock with a cave in it,” some twenty-five miles below the mouth of the Wabash River. The earliest record of a homeseeking pioneer who came to the Cave-in-Rock country and there began an overland trip into Illinois dates back to about 1780, when Captain Nathaniel Hull, of Massachusetts, appeared at what later became Ford’s Ferry. “He and several other young men,” writes Governor John Reynolds in his Pioneer History of Illinois, “descended the Ohio to a point near Ford’s Ferry on that river [for a while known as Hull’s Landing and later as Robin’s Ferry] and came across by land to Kaskaskia.... At this day the Indians were not hostile as afterwards, so that Hull and party escaped through the wilderness without injury.” Nor had any white man as yet practiced piracy on the lower Ohio.

Victor Collot, a French engineer, is one of the first writers who stopped at the Cave and published a brief description of it. He knew of its existence long before he arrived, for his book, A Journey in America, shows that he had planned to stop at the “Big Cave,” and did so in the summer of 1796 when he went down the river to New Orleans.

A few months later the place was visited by Andrew Ellicott, then on his way to Natchez for the purpose of determining the boundary line between the United States and Spain. An entry in his Journal, dated December 15, 1796, shows he “dined at the Great Cave ... one of the greatest natural curiosities on the river.”

On April 16, 1797, Francis Baily, the English astronomer, stopped there. His Journal of a Tour in the Unsettled Parts of North America contains a few pages on the “Big Cave.” Among other things he says, “its entrance was on a landing-place. It had somewhat the appearance of an immense oven. We entered it and found the sides very damp.... We beheld a number of names cut in the sides of the cave, which in this solitary place, and cut off as we were from society, gave us a degree of pleasure to look over.” Baily apparently heard of no outlaws during his short stay. This probably was due to the fact that his visit was made at a time when the Cave was very damp, as is frequently the case in spring. Had he appeared later, he might not have survived to tell of his interesting travels in America, for during the greater part of the year 1797 the place was occupied by the notorious Mason family.

Perrin du Lac, in his Travels through the two Louisianas, writes that he embarked at Pittsburgh, April 22, 1802, “in a pirogue thirty feet long and three feet broad” and that a few weeks later he stopped at the Cave. He says “it is considered one of the greatest natural curiosities in North America.”

The first detailed description of Cave-in-Rock ever printed, as far as now known, appeared in one of the earliest editions of Zadok Cramer’s The Ohio and Mississippi Navigator and was republished in the appendix of Journal of a Tour, 1805, by Thaddeus M. Harris without credit to Cramer.

Thomas Ashe, an unreliable English traveler, wrote an account of Cave-in-Rock shortly after the Cramer or the so-called Harris description was published, and at a time when reports of some of the early robberies that had been committed there were still in fresh circulation. His book entitled Travels in America performed in 1806, contains a chapter of fabrications headed “Cave in the Rock, Ohio Bank, September, 1806.”

In July, 1807, Christian Schultz, then a young man, started from Pittsburgh down the Ohio in a flatboat. He arrived at “The Cave in the Rock” about October 1, continued his trip to New Orleans, and returned, via ship, to New York. In his Travels on an Inland Voyage, he devotes a few pages to the Cave, saying, among other things:

“It is a very curious cavern.... I could not help observing what a very convenient situation this would be for a hermit, or for a convent of monks.... I have no doubt that it has been the dwelling of some person or persons, as the marks of smoke and likewise some wooden hooks affixed to the walls sufficiently prove. Formerly, perhaps, it was inhabited by Indians; but since, with more probability, by a gang of that banditti, headed by Mason and others, who, a few years ago, infested this part of the country and committed a great number of robberies and murders....”

Fortesque Cuming, an unprejudiced Englishman, wrote in his Tour to the Western Country that the Cave is “one of the finest grottoes or caverns I have ever seen.” This interesting traveler, in January, 1807, proceeded to Maysville, Kentucky, by boat, and from there made horseback trips to central Kentucky and Ohio. Returning to Pittsburgh, he started, on May 7, down the Ohio in a flatboat for New Orleans. From old Bruinsburg, a few miles above Natchez, he visited old Greenville. In this town about three years before, one of the Cave-in-Rock outlaws had been convicted under unusual circumstances and hanged and buried in an unusual manner. When traveling by boat Cuming always carried a few skiffs in order to get ashore more easily. On May 18, 1807, a few minutes after passing the head of Cave-in-Rock Island, he landed at what is known as Cave Spring, a cave-like opening a few hundred yards above Cave-in-Rock from which a strong spring of water constantly flows. This crevice in Cave-in-Rock bluff is about nine feet high, three feet wide, and extends back some forty feet. Cuming at first mistook it for the famous Cave, as has been done by more than one traveler since his day. In his sketch pertaining to his visit to Cave-in-Rock he writes:

“Rowing along shore [below Cave Spring] with the skiff, we were soon undeceived as to that’s being the Rocking Cave, as a third of a mile lower down, one of the finest grottoes or caverns I have ever seen opened suddenly to view, resembling the choir of a large church as we looked directly into it. We landed immediately under it and entered it. It is natural, but it is evidently improved by art in the cutting of an entrance three feet wide through the rock in the very center, leaving a projection on each hand, excavated above to the whole breadth of the cavern, the projections resembling galleries.... It is crowned by large cedars, and black and white oaks, some of which impend over, and several beautiful shrubs and flowers, particularly very rich columbines, are thickly scattered all around the entrance.... Standing on the outside, the appearance of some of the company at the inner end of the cave was truly picturesque, they being diminished on the eye to half their size, and removed to three times their real distance.

“There is a perpendicular rocky bluff just opposite the lower end of Cave Island, about two hundred yards above the Cave, where the river narrows to less than half a mile wide, forming a fine situation for fortification.”

Thomas Nuttall probably was the last distinguished traveler who came down the Ohio in a flatboat and commented on the Cave. In his Journal of Travels into the Arkansa Territory he states that he and his party left Shawneetown December 14, 1818. After floating a short distance they came up with three other flatboats and, lashing them together, proceeded upon an all-night journey. He further comments: “The river is here very wide and magnificent and chequered with many islands. The banks of Battery Rock, Rock-in-Cave, and other places are bold and rocky with bordering cliffs. The Occidental wilderness appears to here retain its primeval solitude; its gloomy forests are yet unbroken by the hand of man; they are only penetrated by the wandering hunter and the roaming savage.”

The early western travelers already cited, and a number of their contemporaries and followers who saw the Cave, published descriptions or references that agree in the main, but each, in his own way, was evidently more impressed by certain of its various features than were some of the others who visited the place. A few speculated upon it as an Indian temple of prehistoric times. Some commented upon it from a geological standpoint. A number were especially interested in the names they found carved on the walls; some in the trees that grew around the opening. Others dwelt upon it as a rendezvous of outlaws.

For what various purposes the Cave may have been used in prehistoric times by Mound-builders and Indians, or even Cave Dwellers, is a question for archaeologists and ethnologists. There is far less physical evidence to indicate a previous presence of robbers and counterfeiters than there is to prove that the place was inhabited by prehistoric man. A rusty home-made dagger blade and a part of a counterfeiter’s mold are the only relics that point toward the outlaw occupancy. On the other hand, five well-defined mound sites in the level fields above Cave-in-Rock bluff, and the many flint and stone implements picked up during the past century in and near the Cave indicate beyond doubt the former presence of Indians and Mound-builders. In April, 1918, Robert L. Yeakey, while spading his garden on this bluff, unearthed a carved stone image, six inches high and four inches wide, weighing two pounds, six ounces, representing a man in squatting position. The probability that the image is an idol gives strength to the inference that the Cave was used as a temple some time in the prehistoric past.

The mounds are additional evidence to this effect. These were opened many years ago and have since been plowed over often. Each contained, it is said, from five to ten human skeletons. The bodies had been placed in a stone-walled sepulcher that was covered with flags of stone a few inches thick, over which a circular mound of earth was thrown. The fact that each of these mounds contained a number of skeletons, apparently placed there at one time, leads many to the conclusion that a battle, or battles, must have been fought in or near the Cave and that all, or some, of the dead were buried together. Scientists advance a plausible explanation of this: “We know not if these burials indicate famine, pestilence, war, or unholy sacrifice. We can only conjecture that they were not graves of persons who had died a natural death.” Because of the Cave’s temple-like form and its proximity to these old mounds, it appears more probable that they were erected in connection with the ceremony of “unholy sacrifice” than for any of the three other suggested causes.

The Harris description of the Cave, written about 1803, refers to it as “the habitation of the Great Spirit.” Some thirty years later, Edmund Flagg, in The Far West, written after his visit to “Rock-Inn-Cave,” says: “Like all other curiosities of Nature, this cavern was, by the Indian tribes, deemed the residence of a Manito, or spirit, evil or propitious, concerning whom many a wild legend yet lives among their simple-hearted posterity. They never pass the dwelling place of the divinity without discharging their guns (an ordinary mark of respect) or making some other offering propitiatory of his favor.”

From official records we learn that the section of the country in which Cave-in-Rock is embraced was sold, in 1803, to the United States by the Kaskaskia tribe. In 1818, when the sale was confirmed by the same Indians and the three other tribes then constituting the Illinois confederacy, it became unchallenged government property. Thus, when the Masons, the Harpes, and other early outlaws held forth there, it was still in the Indians’ territory.

From a geological standpoint, the Cave is evidently nothing more than a prosaic hole in a limestone bluff. In neither the main cave nor the crevices above are there any stalactites or stalagmites, but an incrustation resembling such a formation occurs here and there on the walls. In 1818, Henry R. Schoolcraft, in his Personal Memoirs, says: “The cave itself is a striking object for its large and yawning mouth, but to the geologist presents nothing novel.” Collot, in 1796, expressed the opinion that “it is an excavation made in the rocks by the continual beating of the flood.” In a Report published in 1866, A. H. Worthen, director of the Geological Survey of Illinois, states that “the limestone (St. Louis limestone) is quite cherty and the Cave has probably been formed by the action of water percolating through crevices of the rock and by the eroding influences of the atmosphere.” Neither of these explanations is satisfactory. No other has been found. Cave-in-Rock has the appearance of a section of a large cave that was formed by an underground stream in some remote geological age, and later disconnected, by upheavals, from the other parts of the subterranean passage. Some of the other parts may still exist. Sulphur Springs Cave, four miles southwest of Equality, may be one. Bigsby Cave, eight miles north of Cave-in-Rock, may be another. Hardin County is besprinkled with many sinkholes, the outlets of which are unknown. The “Big Sink,” four miles north of the Cave, covers about one hundred acres. Cave-in-Rock may have been an outlet for some of these sinkholes until upheavals made such drainage impossible.

In early days the virgin forests retarded, to a great extent, the water of the heavy rains, and as a result floods were less frequent and less severe. It is probable that when Cave-in-Rock and the country about were covered with trees the place was damper than now, for the water then slowly seeped down from the tree-covered surface. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently dry to serve as a good shelter not only for outlaws, who frequently occupied it, but also for men and women going down the river in flatboats.

Today it is comparatively dry, except during the spring and shortly after a heavy rain. Practically all the water running through the Cave now comes from a narrow crevice in the rear, which drains a small sinkhole in the surface. Through this opening, as already stated, much soil has been deposited in the back part of the Cave during the past fifty years. Nature has made practically no changes in the Cave itself since its discovery by white men, but the landscape has been affected by the removal of the large trees that once shaded its mouth. A decrepit sycamore, an ash or two, a few small maple trees, some scrub cedars, and some Virginia creeper constitute the only vegetation now growing around the opening.

The travelers who visited Cave-in-Rock in flatboat days gave the place more time and thought than did those who appeared after the introduction of steamboats. The New Orleans, or Orleans, which was the first steam-propelled boat to make a trip from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, passed it in 1811. Not until fully five years thereafter was the practicability of navigating the Ohio by steamboats satisfactorily demonstrated. Local tradition has it that the James Monroe, coming down in 1816, was the first steamboat to land at the Cave. Thomas Nuttall, who appeared on the scene two years later, was, as already stated, one of the last distinguished men who floated down the river in a flatboat and commented on the place. Leisure was an inseparable feature of flatboat travel. With the coming of steamboats the lingering of travelers along the river became a thing of the past. After 1820 comparatively few boats of any kind stopped at the Cave. Boats became more numerous, but whether propelled by steam or oars, they traveled not only faster but through a country rapidly increasing in population, and passengers and crew stopping in this section found better shelter elsewhere. But Cave-in-Rock was ever pointed out as a place that “in days gone by” had been the den of flatboat robbers. Counterfeiters and other outlaws, however, operated in the neighborhood until as late as 1832.

The earliest record of a professional artist making a sketch of the Cave dates back to May, 1819, when Major Stephen H. Long came down the Ohio on the steamer Western Engineer, on his way to his Rocky Mountains exploring expedition. In his notes on “Cave-Inn-Rock or House of Nature” he gives a description of the Cave, and says that Samuel Seymour, the official artist of the expedition, “sketched two views of the entrance.” Edwin James’s account of this expedition contains many of Seymour’s pictures, but none of places east of the Mississippi. Efforts made in Washington to locate his original sketches were without success.

Edmund Flagg, a traveler, journalist, and poet, who lived the greater part of his life in Louisville and St. Louis, spent a short time at the Cave in 1836, while on a steamboat trip gathering material for his book, The Far West. He gives some of the history of the outlaws of “Cave-Inn-Rock” and then describes the Cave and the Island. He says the place furnishes “a scene of natural beauty worthy an Inman’s pencil” and that “if I mistake not an engraving of the spot has been published: a ferocious-looking personage, pistol in hand, crouched at the entrance, eagerly watching a descending boat.”

Interior of Cave-in-Rock about 1825

A view from the rear of the lower cave, showing burned embers on floor, notched log (on left) leading to upper cave, and flatboats on the river

(From the original drawing by Charles Alexander Lesueur)

Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, writes May 19, 1833: “We embarked on the Paragon steamboat at Shawneetown ... and after passing Cave-in-Rock Island, a long wooded island, we glided past Cave-in-Rock, a cavern which has been drawn by Lesueur.” Lesueur’s drawing was made about 1825. It is an interior view looking out over the river and conveys a good idea of the Cave’s size and form. However, the opening to the small upper cavity and the leaning pole for climbing into it are placed a little too far to the left.[1]

Maximilian was accompanied by his artist, Charles Bodmer, who, during the course of his travels in North America, made eighty-one pictures, all of which were published in 1843 in the Maximilian Atlas. Most of these drawings pertain to the life of the Indians of the Upper Missouri, and stand today as the first and best record of the costumes of these tribes. Among the subjects presented is his Cave-in-Rock picture, one of the two early views of the Cave now available. Bodmer probably drew it from memory. It shows a landscape interesting in itself, but it is an absolutely misleading presentation of the actual scene. From no point or angle does the view appear as drawn by him, or even suggest such a scene. By the ordinary working of nature no such changes could have been brought about in many centuries. The mouth of the Cave is near the lower end of a long bluff of almost uniform height and opposite the lower end of Cave-in-Rock Island. A camera picture of the lower end of this bluff, made in 1917, appears among the illustrations in this book. Bodmer’s view places the opening in a short bluff that is more or less cone-shaped and opposite or above the head of an island. When high water reaches the mouth of the Cave, as is shown by Bodmer, then Cave-in-Rock Island is submerged many feet and its banks cannot possibly be seen. This picture occurs in a number of books, but without any comments on its gross inaccuracy. Some reproducers have taken the liberty of adding a setting sun in the background.

In 1916, J. Bernhard Alberts, of Louisville, made an impressionistic painting of the mouth of the Cave. His painting is true to the scene as it was at the time of his visit. He also drew a pencil sketch showing a general view of the interior with the inner edge of the mouth in the immediate foreground, the artist’s point of view being from just outside the mouth.

Piracy and Rough Life on the River

It is not clear when Cave-in-Rock first became the headquarters of the criminals who flourished on the Ohio, and preyed upon primitive commerce and travel between Pittsburgh and the Lower Mississippi. Shortly after the Revolution was under way, renegades from eastern communities, corrupt stragglers from the American army, and villains who had had their brutal training in western wilds, began to seek in the Ohio valley refuge from the more orderly and well settled communities. Samuel Mason, who had been an officer in the Continental army, converted the cavern into an inn as early as 1797. While he occupied the Cave, and a few years thereafter, it was known as “Cave-Inn-Rock.” It was ideally located. Every passing boat must reveal itself to those in the Cave who had a long, clear view up and down the river. A lookout could detect boats long before boatmen could perceive the Cave. The bold beauty of the bluff made it pleasant for the boats to run in near the sharply shelving shore, and many travelers were thus simply and easily delivered into the hands of the banditti. As an inn, where drink and rest could be had, it decoyed them; as a scene for shrouded crime it was perfect.

The earliest travelers on the western rivers floated or propelled themselves with paddles and oars in small, clumsy craft. The Indian canoe or pirogue was heavy, but was managed with skill by those accustomed to its use. With the growing stream of settlers and the increasing number of settlements along the Ohio and Mississippi, there arose a necessity for larger craft that would bear heavier burdens. This brought the flatboat era covering the period from 1795 to 1820—that quarter of a century known as the Golden Age of Flatboating. During that era river piracy was at its height. The lighter boats, pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux were to the clumsy rafts and flatboats bearing heavy cargoes what submarines and torpedo boats have been to the heavier ships in later warfare. Inland piracy had its advantage in using the small craft on dark nights for sudden descents and escapes.

In the midst of this period the stately steamboat age began its development. It was inaugurated in 1811 when the first steam-propelled “water-walker” made its laborious and astonishing way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. By 1820 steamboats had become a dependable factor in traffic, and were, to river travel, what the railroad train was later to become to the slow stagecoach and freight wagon. It was inevitable that under steamboat influence flatboats of all types—arks, broadhorns, Orleans boats, keel-boats, and flat-bottomed barges—would follow the primitive pirogues, skiffs, and batteaux into retirement, except for neighborhood use. River piracy waned with the conditions it preyed upon, but not until about 1830 did it cease utterly.

In society, as in nature, everything develops with opportunity and disappears according to necessity. In the primitive age of river craft many travelers were captured or killed by Indians bent on revenge or pillage. These marauders were sometimes led by white renegades. Later, pioneers floating down the Ohio or Mississippi on flatboats came in contact with comparatively few savages, but were exposed to a far more daring and dangerous enemy in the form of river pirates—white men, many of them descendants of supposedly civilized European families. These disappeared as the population increased. Then ensued the reign of the more diplomatic river pirates—the professional gamblers who, for a half century, used cards and other gaming devices as instruments with which to rob those who ventured into their society.

Such were the types of craft and men operating upon and infesting the rivers in the early days. The country through which these boats moved was not the country we see today. Changes in the shapes and channels of the rivers have been numerous, only the rock-defined reaches preserving their original contours. Appearances in detail have greatly changed. The wonderful unbroken forests are gone. Where they once stood are now fields and farms or cut-over forests; every few miles there is a town. The river channels once mysterious and uncertain are now carefully charted.

Early voyageurs going down the river had, of course, no guides and there were no known marks to indicate their approach to any of the features of the river as it wound through the wild, uninhabited country. The boatmen who came afterwards carrying maps rudely scratched, found them unsatisfactory because of inaccuracies or lack of detail. Not until a handbook was made available, after some years of careful compilation of river features, could the uninitiated navigate the large rivers with any degree of safety.[2]

The numerous charts in The Navigator show the curves, islands, sandbars, eddies, and channels, and mark the location of towns and many other places of significance. The accompanying text contains instructions of value to the boatman, and historical data of interest. It is curious, however, that no section of either the Mississippi or Ohio is designated as one where outlaws were likely to be encountered—not even Cave-in-Rock nor the mouth of Cache River, which were long considered the most dangerous resorts on the Ohio. In every edition of The Navigator about a page is devoted to a description of the Cave and instructions to boatmen passing it, but there is no reference to its grim history. Zadok Cramer was evidently a practical man, with no eye to the speculative. It was not until 1814 that he added a few lines bearing on the Cave’s “economic” history:

“This cavern sometimes serves as a temporary abode for those wanting shelter, in case of shipwreck, or other accident, which happen on the river near it. Families have been known to reside here tolerably comfortable from the northern blasts of winter. The mouth of this cave was formerly sheltered, and nearly hid by some trees growing in front of it, but the rude axe has leveled them to the earth and the cavern is exposed to the open view of the passenger. Emigrants from the states, twenty-seven years ago used to land here and wagon their goods across the Illinois country, it not being more than one hundred and twenty miles from this place to Kaskaskia on the Mississippi.”

The Cave, of course, had more than criminal uses. How on one occasion it served as a “temporary abode for those wanting shelter” is recorded in The American Pioneer, published in 1842. In this magazine Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth, under the title of “History of a Voyage from Marietta to New Orleans in 1805,” gives an interesting account of the schooner Nonpareil and her voyage south, based on data furnished him by members of her crew. The boat was built at Marietta and started down the river April 21, 1805. She was a sea-going vessel intended to run on the lakes near New Orleans. The captain doubtless steered his course by a copy of The Navigator. We quote from Hildreth’s account of what the crew found in 1805 at the well-known lair of outlaws:

“As the Nonpareil approached near the mouth of this dreaded cave, a little after twilight, they were startled at seeing the bright blaze of a fire at its entrance. Knowing of its former fame as the den of a band of robbers, they could not entirely suppress the suspicion it awoke in their minds of its being again occupied for the same purpose. Nevertheless, as they had previously determined not to pass this noted spot without making it a visit, they anchored the schooner a little distance from the shore and landed in the skiff. Being well armed with pistols they marched boldly up to the cavern where, instead of being greeted with the rough language and scowling visages of a band of robbers, they found the cave occupied by smiling females and sportive children. A part of the women were busily occupied with their spinning wheels, while others prepared the evening meal. Their suspicions were not, however, fully removed by all these appearances of domestic peace, still thinking that the men must be secreted in some hidden corner of the cave ready to fall on them unawares. On a little further conversation they found the present occupants of the dreaded cave consisted of four young emigrant families from Kentucky going to settle in Illinois. The females were yet in the bloom of life. Their husbands had bought or taken up lands a few miles back from the river, and after moving their families and household goods to this spot had returned to their former residences to bring out their cattle, in the meantime leaving their wives and children in the occupancy of the cave till their return.

“Having brought, with their spinning wheels and looms, an abundance of flax, the women spent the weary days of their husbands’ absence in the useful employment of spinning. A large fire in the mouth of the cave gave cheerfulness to the gloomy spot and enabled them, at night, to proceed with their labors, while its bright rays were reflected upon the looms, beds, and household utensils which lay piled up along the side of the cave. By day the sun afforded them light, the mouth of the cave being capacious and elevated, while the roof sheltered them from the rain. They were in daily expectation of the arrival of their husbands, when they would move out on to their farms in company.

“A little conversation soon dissipated all suspicions of harm from the minds of their visitors ... and, borrowing from them a torch, they explored the hidden recesses of the cave. At this time no vestige of its former occupants remained but a few scattered barrel staves, and the traces of their fires against the blackened sides of the rock. The walls, even at that early day, were thickly scored with the names of former visitors, to which they hastily added their own, and thousands have no doubt been added since. Bidding a warm farewell to this singular and solitary community, they entered their boat, greatly wondering at the courage and confidence of these lonely females. Their surprise, however, in a manner subsided when they reflected that they were the daughters of Kentucky and from the land of Daniel Boone.”

The Nonpareil experienced no trouble with river pirates, but was wrecked during a storm on the Mississippi and never reached her proposed destination. So, in one form or another, every flatboat and other early river craft suffered more or less trouble. History records many robberies and other misfortunes, but its pages also show that, notwithstanding the numerous trials and tribulations, early river life, rough as it was, was more of a romance than a tragedy. Going down the Ohio and Mississippi proved, in many instances, “easy sailing” compared to the flatboatman’s overland trip north over the Natchez Trace and other wilderness roads infested with highwaymen.

The usual plan of the river robbers was to station one or two of their men and women at some prominent place on shore to hail a passing boat. These decoys pleaded to be taken aboard, claiming they were alone in the wilderness and wished to go to some settlement further down the river, or that they desired to purchase certain necessities which they lacked. If the boat was thus enticed ashore, the crew saw their cargo unloaded, and plundered, or beheld their craft continue its course down the river in the hands of the enemy, themselves held as hostages or murdered.

Boat wreckers were another common source of great danger. Under one pretext or another they managed to get aboard the boat and scuttle it near a place where their confederates were prepared to make an attack. Or, like Colonel Fluger, they waited until they found a boat tied along the bank and then bored holes in the bottom or dug out the caulking. When the ill-fated boat began to sink, the fellow-wreckers rushed to the rescue and appropriated the goods for their own use, killing part or all the crew if necessary.

Then, as now, a number of dangerous channels existed in the Ohio and Mississippi. They were designated as such in The Navigator. Near the head of some of them lived reliable settlers who made it a business to pilot boats through for pay. Pirates frequently succeeded in passing themselves off as trustworthy local pilots. Boats turned over to such men for safe steering were usually grounded and immediately thereafter delivered into the hands of outlaws in waiting.

One of the dangerous channels, against which voyageurs were warned by The Navigator, ran from the head of Walker’s Bar (a bar beginning about two miles below Cave-in-Rock) down to Tower Rock, and from there extended to the foot of Hurricane Island, a total distance of about eight miles. The author of the river guide, after devoting considerable space to directions for navigating this channel and avoiding the Hurricane Bars, adds a suggestion: “Just below the Cave, on the right bank, there is a person who is sometimes employed to pilot boats through this serpentine channel, and it is better for a stranger to pay a dollar or two for this purpose, than run the risk of grounding on either one or the other of these bars in low water. When the water is high there is no occasion for a director.”

The outlaws at Cave-in-Rock turned to their advantage the suggestion published in The Navigator. About ten miles above the Cave, near Battery Rock, or on what has long since been called the Jonathan Brown Old Place, the robbers stationed a man who offered to pilot, for a small sum, single boats or small fleets through this “serpentine channel.” He explained that the person referred to by The Navigator as living “just below the Cave” was out on a visit and would not return for a week or more. In the event the first man failed, another, standing ready a few miles further down at Ford’s Ferry, offered his services. The pilot who succeeded in being employed grounded the boat in front of the Cave if, by the time he reached the place, he judged the cargo was worth the risk and the crew could be overpowered. If more time was required, he guided the boat to the head of Hurricane Island. There it was either wrecked or taken safely through the channel, the procedure depending on whether or not he judged a profitable robbery possible. Boatmen who declined to take a pilot aboard at Battery Rock or Ford’s Ferry were likely, if the water was comparatively low, to inquire for a director “just below the Cave.” The man procured there, whether a member of the Cave band or not, invariably guided the boat safely through. Thus by helping to maintain one reputable and reliable place near the Cave for procuring the services of a pilot, the robbers experienced little trouble in trapping the boats they selected for that purpose.

Although most of the prospective victims were given little consideration until after they had come within ten or twenty miles of the Cave, in a number of instances the river pirates began setting a trap for a boat long before it arrived at Shawneetown.

The fact that the victims were piloted to the Cave by certain members of a band, or enticed into the place by some other means for the sole purpose of robbery, is recorded by many early writers; none of them, however, gives any details. All authors who touch on the Cave’s history publish statements based on what other men and women heard other people had experienced while in the hands of the outlaws. Only one instance has been found in which the victim himself (Dr. Charles H. Webb) recited to an author the details of how he was decoyed to the Cave and how he escaped from the men then occupying the place. The old flatboat robbers and flatboat wreckers left no first-hand accounts of the methods they employed.

The year 1788 roughly marks the beginning of the big inflow of settlers into the region west of the Alleghenies, also the beginning of counterfeiting and other outlawry at Cave-in-Rock. Many travelers and home-seekers followed the trails and went into the interior afoot, on horseback, or in wagons; others took the river to some river point and either settled there, or proceeded overland to an inland section. Thus, by “long lines of wagons” and “great fleets of boats” the middle West became settled. In the meantime many a small party traveled alone over the trails or drifted down the river in a single boat or in a small fleet, into the new and sparsely populated country, and became easy prey for highway robbers or river pirates who were likely to appear at any time and in any disguise.[3]

The earliest connection of the Cave with the name of any outlaw who became famous was in 1797, when Samuel Mason, of Revolutionary fame and hideous fate, seems to have occupied it as a main trap for his carefully worked out scheme of river piracy on a large scale. He erected a great rude sign on the river bank near the mouth of the Cave, proclaiming to every passerby that his “Liquor Vault and House for Entertainment” was open to the public. Many captains and their crews and many flatboat passengers were lured to it. After Mason and his family left for the South, most of the succeeding bands, during their necessarily short stay, operated a gambling and drinking place on the same principle.

It was a common practice among outlaws frequently to change not only their headquarters but their names. While at Cave-in-Rock Mason was also known as “Wilson.” Thomas Ashe, who wrote about it, probably did not know that the Wilson he described was Samuel Mason. Among the various men who appeared after the departure of Samuel Mason, alias “Wilson,” was one Jim Wilson. Whether Jim Wilson was his real name is not known. However, between Samuel Mason as “Wilson” and a later man known as “Jim Wilson” there has been more or less confusion for almost a century, especially in tradition. In 1897 William Courtney Watts wrote a historical romance, Chronicles of a Kentucky Settlement, in which he presents James Ford, of Ford’s Ferry notoriety, as “James Wilson.” James Ford was in no way connected with Mason or with Wilson, but his presentation under the fictitious name of “James Wilson” had added to the already existing confusion.

After James Ford’s death, which occurred in 1833—and many years before Watts applied the name of “James Wilson” to him—a writer published a sketch of the career of one Jim Wilson at the Cave. This sketch is here recapitulated, not as a story that can be verified in all its details by history, but as a semi-historical tale which may convey a better idea of the methods, life, and fate of the Cave’s outlaws than formal history. Only one who will make a study of the Cave’s past—from the available authenticated records down to some of its absurd traditions—will recognize this story as a picture in which facts fairly divide the scene with fiction, and painted in colors that bring joy to the hearts of readers of dime novels. When and by whom it was written or first published has not been ascertained. It apparently was not written before 1836, for the author, in his introduction, attempts a description of the Cave as it appeared that year. The writer evidently had read Thomas Ashe’s account published in 1808, and was also familiar with some of the Cave’s printed history and oral traditions. The story was probably first published in an old magazine or newspaper. In 1893 it appeared, anonymously and without credit, in the Crittenden Press, of Marion, Kentucky. From that weekly it was copied by many newspapers in the lower Ohio Valley, and is now preserved, under various titles, in many a scrap book.

This old story is interesting because it was written when stories of the Cave were still fresh. Inaccuracies and confusions of names and dates may have crept in, but it remains the first concise and inherently reasonable account of how the Cave was first occupied as a den by river criminals. In the presentation of the usual method of the Cave’s renegades, it matters very little whether the first of those desperate captains of crime bore the name of Wilson, Mason, or Harpe. In this case it seems clearly the story of Samuel Mason about 1797. The names they assumed might vary with every flatboat or raft that passed. An alias is ever the shield of the criminal. The story describes not only a method actually employed by the Cave’s outlaws for many years, but also a method by which the career of more than one of these river pirates was, as we shall see later, so tragically terminated. The story runs, as follows:

“About the year 1809, one Jim Wilson, a flatboatman, while passing down the Ohio, was overtaken by a terrific storm. He steered his boat under the shelter of a cliff. On landing he observed the opening of the cave. He was attracted by the commodious rooms with dry ceilings and sanded floors, and resolved that on his return to Pittsburgh he would bring his family hither.

“In the following spring Wilson’s boat again landed at the foot of the cliff. This time he was not alone, but with him came his wife, five children, two slaves, and William Hall, the great counterfeiter. His boat was loaded with provisions, stores, liquors, and arms, which he had stolen from the government warehouse at Fort Pitt on the night before his departure. The great cave was soon transformed into a dwelling and tavern large enough to accommodate several travelers.

“Wilson’s object for landing and establishing himself in so remote and romantic headquarters will be seen hereafter. A sign was planted at the water’s edge bearing these words: ‘Wilson’s Liquor Vault and House for Entertainment.’ This novel sign had a magnetic effect upon the boatmen who were almost daily passing en route to southern markets, with flatboats loaded with produce. The boat crews were generally jovial fellows, fond of rum, rest, and merriment, and hardly a boat passed without stopping. Many were the guests at Wilson’s Tavern; thieves and gamblers stopped off here and in a few months the place became infamous for its licentiousness and blasphemy.

“Wilson had been for many years a deep-dyed criminal and only came here that he might vary his crimes, and have a wider field for operation. Out of his guests he soon formed a band of the most noted robbers, murderers, and counterfeiters that, for two years, had no parallel in modern history. Their headquarters were at the Cave, but they had many stations along the Ohio above and below, which were maintained for the purpose of preventing suspicion being cast upon the genial landlord at the Cave. The principal station was at Hurricane Island, where forty-five men were stationed all the time.

“Each boat that landed at the Cave was captured and such of the crew as would not join Wilson’s Gang were allowed to drift on to Hurricane Island where they were again captured and the remainder of the crew foully murdered and their bodies cast into the Ohio. With new pilots and crews the boats and cargoes were taken to New Orleans, and converted into cash which was conveyed to the Cave through the wilderness of Kentucky and Tennessee.

“Many boats loaded with valuable cargoes left port on the upper Ohio and its tributaries, under the guidance of experienced and trustworthy officers. The officers and crews never returned. No returns for sales were ever received. It soon became a mystery that so many honorable men never came back to pay over the proceeds, and to tell the perils of their voyage. It was many months before any serious suspicions were created. After that it was found that the cargoes were disposed of by entirely different crews from those entrusted with them. There was but limited postal or other communication in those days—letters of special importance were carried by messengers who often fell into the hands of Wilson’s men. Thereby they kept posted and, by changing the communication to suit their purposes, and forwarding them by different carriers, often thwarted the attempt of justice, and kept their whereabouts enveloped in mystery for many months. ‘But it is a long lane that hath no turn.’ It was finally ascertained that no tidings could be had of any boat after it had passed certain points on the Ohio near Wilson’s Tavern.

“A meeting of the Pittsburgh shippers was called and it was determined to ferret out the mystery. This would be a shrewd piece of detective work which would be attended by many dangers. A large reward was offered for information as to the exact location of the robber band. John Waller, a determined and ambitious man of Maysville, Kentucky, resolved to secure the reward or perish in the attempt. He was furnished with a cargo contributed by various shippers along the Ohio, and with five trusted companions he set out early in the spring of 1810. They floated with the current many days. At last one evening they came in sight of the Cave, and were attracted by the novel sign and also the presence of several females on the bank, who made gestures for them to land. They held a hasty consultation and resolved to land; a few sweeps of the steering oar brought them to the foot of the cliff.”

That which follows this clear description of ordinary circumstances is evidently a mixture of fact and fiction that represents the imaginative style of the day. It is quite plain that the author himself had not personally visited the Cave, but had relied upon the fictions of Thomas Ashe or the reflections from Ashe’s account that had gained circulation and belief. He accepts the mythical “upper cave” and has the Cave divided off into rooms and a “council chamber,” no relics of which have ever been reported by any matter-of-fact observer from that time to this. The leader, “Jim Wilson,” he converts into a semi-savage with matted and tangled hair and beard, who is yet a shrewd trader and an orator of no mean power for his day. On the occasion of the initiation of new recruits Jim Wilson delivers a romantic and argumentative speech that is equal to the best fiction of the times.

The story narrates graphically how Waller and his men were overawed and compelled, under fear, to agree to join the robber band; how they were received into it with melodramatic ceremonies and then were oath-bound, but not fully trusted; how they made their escape—the savage and astute robbers being, of course, fooled for the exigencies of the event; how the Waller force combined with its waiting reinforcements, returned, captured Jim Wilson and then went to Hurricane Island and destroyed that part of the band; and how eventually “Jim Wilson’s head was severed, his body buried ... the head identified and delivered to the proper authorities at Pittsburgh ... and the captors received the merited reward.” This last point is plainly an echo of Mason’s fate.

This story of the activities of the early renegades of civilization, and of the river pirates who occupied the Cave bears upon its face the stamp of truth that fits neatly into practically all traditions from about 1795 to about 1820.

Before Mason became famous, however, greater scoundrels than he were to attract public attention, and hold it for some years. The story of the Harpes—“Big” and “Little” Harpe—is one that may freeze the blood as read now in the light of old records and personal accounts that seem to bring the reader into the very presence of these two brutes. In the security of law and order in these days the facts seem remote, but when the sparse settlement of the West in 1799 is realized, and the further fact that wilderness hospitality opened doors to all travelers and admitted these monsters freely with good people, it is possible then to conceive the horror their deeds and presence aroused.

The Harpes—A Terrible Frontier Story

The career of the two Harpes[4] in Tennessee, southern Illinois, and Kentucky, particularly Kentucky, at the close of the eighteenth century has rarely been equalled in the history of crime, either in peace or war. Its beginning was so sudden, its motives wrapped in such mystery, its race so swift, and its circumstances so terrible and unbelievably brutal as to justify Collins, the distinguished historian of Kentucky, in referring to the brothers as “the most brutal monsters of the human race.”

At that time, 1798–99, Kentucky had a pioneer population of about two hundred thousand, which was largely centered in the new trading and agricultural towns in the eastern part and in the rich bluegrass country. The remainder of the state, except along the water courses, was well nigh a wilderness. In the southern and western portions buffalo grazed, and bear were plentiful. East Tennessee, where the scourge of crime began, was even more sparsely settled. This pioneer population was vigorous, rude, and accustomed even to Indian atrocities. Among the settlers were many who, as fugitives from justice, had deliberately sought seclusion from the eastern states because of criminal offenses. The Ohio River was infested with inland pirates, and the early rivermen themselves were a rough and violent type. Isolation led well-meaning pioneers to be generous and confiding to those whom they had tested, but to a great degree might was right, and strangers looked askance at each other and were prepared for the worst.

Yet such a rude and hardy people as these were gripped with horror at the atrocities of the Harpes, at their often unmeaning and unprovoked murders. It is difficult in these days of well ordered government to realize the mysterious terror and excitement that began near Knoxville in 1798 and swept through the wilderness to the borders of the Mississippi, and across the Ohio into Illinois like some sudden, creeping fire that breaks out in underbrush, and grows steadily in intensity and rage until it sweeps forests before it. All this was, in a measure, realized in the breasts of human beings as the hideous crimes of the Harpes increased.

Aside from the wars and the recorded importances of political development, the episode of the Harpes is the most astounding event in the early life of the Middle West. It engaged the memory of men for forty years, and the pens of numerous historians, and writers of memoir have been occupied with it ever since. In the main the story has been well preserved, but in the details there has been the variation that grows with repetition. The most dignified historians have not disdained to seek the minute details attaching to the persons and actions of these two men from the moment they began their criminal career to the thrilling blood-chase in which the older brother was captured and killed, and the younger escaped into exile and to an even more dramatic and terrible death.

To this day the story of “The Harpes” and “Harpe’s Head” is told about firesides in the Cave-in-Rock country, in southern and western Kentucky and in eastern Tennessee. It has been perpetuated in folk ballads and written by scores of pens. [[93]]

It is the purpose here to bring together the many threads of the tale as they have been verified and corrected by original records sought from Wisconsin to New Orleans, and from Knoxville to Cave-in-Rock and the Mississippi River.

Judge James Hall, while living in Illinois, wrote a brief account of one of the crimes committed by these outlaws, and in April, 1824, published it in The Port Folio of Philadelphia. In his introductory remarks he comments: “Neither avarice nor want nor any of the usual inducements to the commission of crime, seemed to govern their conduct. A savage thirst for blood—a deep-rooted enmity against human nature, could alone be discovered in their actions.... Plunder was not their object; they took only what would have been freely given them, and no more than what was necessary to supply the immediate wants of nature; they destroyed without having suffered injury, and without the prospect of benefit.... Mounted on fine horses they plunged into the forest, eluded pursuit by frequently changing their course, and appeared unexpectedly to perpetrate new horrors, at points distant from those where they were supposed to lurk.”

Judge Hall, up to that time, had done little more than describe one of their last crimes, yet The Cincinnati Literary Gazette, May 28, 1825, came out with a statement admitting that there may have been two outlaws by the name of Harpe, but added: “We have no hesitation in asserting that their history, as published in The Port Folio, is unworthy of belief.... The horrible details concerning these men ... such disgusting sketches of human depravity and barbarism manifest either a vitiated taste or a total disregard of the morals of the community.”

As far as is now known, at least two papers published in the month following came to the defense of Judge Hall’s account. The Illinois Gazette, of Shawneetown, among other things, declared: “The depravity and bloodshed which marked their existence ... are circumstances too strongly impressed upon the recollections of our early settlers to be contradicted at this date.”

The Columbian, of Henderson, Kentucky, in a half column article devoted to the same subject, asserts: “The account published in The Port Folio is correct in every essential point.... However it may be regretted that such monsters as the Harpes ever should have existed to disgrace humanity, yet it is an uncontrovertible fact.” [[56]]

In the August, 1825, issue of The Port Folio Judge Hall published an account of another murder committed by the Harpes—the killing of Thomas Langford, who was among their first victims in Kentucky. In the same number he devotes a few pages to a verification of the statements he published then and a few months previous. And before half had been told about the Harpes, The Cincinnati Literary Gazette was convinced of its error in doubting and disputing the veracity of Judge Hall. Judge Hall wrote several pages justifying the publication of the weird and wonderful facts of the career of the Harpes. His arguments published in 1825 in his own defense hold good today and may be equally well applied to the story of the Harpes here given, which, as far as is known, is the first attempt to compile a complete history of these notorious outlaws:

“If it is intended to be objected, that these ‘horrid details,’ even if true, are not proper for publication—I reply, that whatever tends to develop the history or character of a people, is a legitimate subject of public discussion. History to be of any value must be true. It must disclose not only the truth but the whole truth. In vain would the historian seek this in the frail monuments vaguely preserved in the uncertain legend of tradition. He must resort to national records and to the testimony of writers contemporary with the events which he attempts to describe, and if the latter abstain from the narration of ‘disgusting sketches of human depravity and barbarism,’ history must be curtailed of her most fruitful source of incident, and men and nations stripped of their boldest peculiarity. It is perhaps forgotten that ‘depravity and barbarism’ constitute almost the sole basis of history, tragedy, and the epic song; that kings and courts are nothing without them; that they revel amid ‘the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war;’ and stand forth in bold relief in every department of civil subordination. It is to be deplored that such is the fact; but while crime and folly continue to predominate in the affairs of men, they will be found to swell the pages of those who attempt to exhibit correct pictures of human nature.

“In describing the American backwoodsmen, a class of men peculiar to our country, I have thought it proper to introduce among other authentic anecdotes the story of the Harpes. My object was to display as well the extraordinary sufferings to which the earliest emigrants to the western country were exposed, as the courage with which they met and repelled those hardships.”

The Harpes were believed to be brothers. They were natives of North Carolina. Micajah, known as Big Harpe, was born about 1768, and Wiley, known as Little Harpe, was born about 1770. Their father was said to have been a Tory who fought under the British flag at King’s Mountain and took part in a number of other battles against the colonists. Before the close of the Revolution and immediately thereafter many of the Tories living in the south Atlantic colonies fled toward the Mississippi. Those who still sympathized with the King of England and continued to live in the “Old States” were, in most sections, ostracized by their neighbors. It was to this class that the parents of the Harpes belonged; and it was, therefore, in an environment of hatred for and by neighbors that the two sons grew up.

About the year 1840 Colonel G. W. Sevier, son of Governor John Sevier, in an interview with Lyman C. Draper, the historian, stated that Big Harpe, when asked shortly before he was killed why he had committed so many crimes, answered that he had been badly treated and consequently had become disgusted with all mankind. [[12G]] The same statement is made by J. W. M. Breazeale, another well-known early Tennesseean, who had lived in Knoxville the greater part of his life and had investigated the careers of the outlaws.

One writer attributes their acts of fiendish inhumanity to the fact that they believed every man’s life, whether good, indifferent or bad, was predestined and that the All Wise had foreordained for them a hatred of humanity and a career of crime. [[121]] Draper, in his “Sketch of the Harpes,” comments on the fact that “their tawny appearance and dark curly hair betrayed a tinge of African blood coursing through their veins.”

Criminologists may or may not agree as to the underlying cause of the great thirst for blood possessed by the Harpes, but the fact that they were the most savage and terrible characters in this period of American history cannot be disputed.

About the year 1795 the two men, accompanied by Susan Roberts and Betsey Roberts, left North Carolina for Tennessee. Susan claimed to be the legal wife of Big Harpe, whereas Betsey merely posed as such. Big Harpe, however, claimed both women as his wives. The Harpes cared as little for the laws of matrimony as for any other laws and the legality or illegality of anything they did was a matter of indifference to them.

The two men and their women roamed in central Tennessee about two years. Most of their time was spent with a few stray Creek and Cherokee Indians who at the time were ostracized by their tribes and were committing atrocities against their own people as well as against the whites. The Harpes joined the savages in their outrages, and not only encouraged them in their bloody deeds, but gave them many demonstrations showing to what extent barbarity could be practiced. Asleep or awake they were armed with tomahawks and knives and never took a step from camp without a gun. They were always prepared to shed blood for the satisfaction of shedding it, or to resist arrest should any attempt be made to capture them. They lived like man-eating animals. The women as well as the men wore leather hunting shirts and moccasins made from the untanned skin of animals they killed. They never wore hats except in the coldest weather and then used the kind they “whanged” together with deer skin thongs. [[121]]

Some time during 1797 the four left middle Tennessee for the new settlement of Knoxville. While wandering toward the eastern part of the state they met a young Methodist preacher named William Lambuth, who was traveling through the wilderness alone. They robbed him and among his belongings found a Bible. In turning the leaves, looking for bank bills, Big Harpe discovered on the front page, written in plain letters the names “William Lambuth” and “George Washington.” Pointing to the name of the General, Harpe remarked: “That is a brave and good man, but a mighty rebel against the King.” The articles found in Lambuth’s possession convinced the Harpes that he was a preacher, whereupon they returned to him not only his Bible but also the gun, the little money, and the horse they had taken. Then abruptly turning from him and shouting, “We are the Harpes,” they quickly disappeared. This is probably the only instance in the lives of the Harpes, after the beginning of their murderous career, when they had anyone, old or young, in their power, and showed less than a fiendish barbarity. [[121]]

Obeying the principle that birds of a feather flock together, the Harpes, it seems, were attracted toward the new settlement of Knoxville. In March, 1798, James Weir, on his way from South Carolina to Kentucky, spent a few days in the town. Writing of his short stay there he says:

“In the infant town of Knox the houses are irregular and interspersed. It was County Court day when I came. The town was confused with a promiscuous throng of every denomination. Some talked, some sang, and mostly all did profanely swear. I stood aghast, my soul shrank back to hear the horrid oaths and dreadful indignities offered to the Supreme Governor of the Universe, who with one frown is able to shake them into non-existence. There was what I never did see before, viz., on Sunday, dancing, singing, and playing of cards, etc.... It was said by a gentleman of the neighborhood that ‘the Devil is grown so old that it renders him incapable of traveling and that he has taken up in Knoxville and there hopes to spend the remaining part of his days in tranquility, as he believes he is among his friends,’ but as it is not a good principle to criticise the conduct of others, I shall decline it with this general reflection, that there are some men of good principles in all places, but often more bad ones to counterbalance them.” [[109]]

The Harpes doubtless felt they could better gratify their thirst for blood in the vicinity of a settlement like Knoxville than in a wide wilderness where subjects for their cruelty were too few. They found a small tract of cleared land on Beaver Creek, about eight miles west of Knoxville. Upon this they built a log cabin for themselves, and a pen for their horses, and, in order to conceal their motives, cultivated a few acres of ground. Under this feint of honest occupation they experienced no difficulty in gaining the confidence of their neighbors. In fact, so easily had they made a favorable impression that within a few weeks after their arrival Little Harpe married Sarah or Sally Rice, a daughter of John Rice, a preacher living about four miles north of the Harpe hut.

In the meantime the two brothers made trips to the seat of justice, for then, as now, the occasion and the desire “to go to town” to see “what’s going on” was a common one among the people who lived in the country. Swapping horses was then, and still is to a great extent, one of the features of a day at the small court house towns. So when, on one of their first trips to Knoxville, the Harpes brought with them a fine three-year-old mare and offered to run her in a race, no suspicion was aroused. The horse was apparently superior to any other in town that day and no owner could be induced to venture his quarter nag against her. A Mr. Aycoff, recognizing the mare as an unusually good one, bought her and became so attached to the animal that he kept her almost a quarter of a century. It is interesting to note that twenty years after he purchased her, a gentleman from Georgia, visiting near Knoxville, recognized her as the filly that had been stolen from him many years before. [[12G]]

The Harpes rapidly increased the number of their trips to town, but it was soon noticed that with each succeeding visit their supply of pork and mutton increased. They sold this meat to John Miller, one of the most respected merchants of Knoxville, through whom the Harpe hams soon became well known. But the reputation of the two brothers for drinking and gambling, and the disturbances they raised in the village were sufficient to arouse suspicion in the community. By this and other evidence John Miller was convinced that the Harpes were hog thieves, and suspected that their dishonesty and meanness had no limit. [[12G]]

Soon after the arrival of the Harpes in east Tennessee a number of houses and stables near Knoxville were set on fire and many of them burned to the ground. As no motive for such destruction of property could be discovered, the citizens attributed it to downright rascality. So strong had become suspicion against the Harpes that when Edward Tiel, who lived a mile from Knoxville, discovered that several of his best horses had been stolen, he enlisted a number of neighbors and immediately proceeded to the home of the Harpes. The investigators found that the cabin had been deserted recently, but noticed indications that horses had been tied to some near-by trees. Tiel and his men took up the trail and followed it across Clinch River into the Cumberland Mountains. There they captured the two Harpes who were alone at the time. The stolen horses were recovered, but when the captors and their prisoners reached a point about five miles northeast of Knoxville, the horse thieves made their escape. [[21]]

Tiel and his men tried to effect their recapture but, failing in the attempt, returned to Knoxville. That same night the two Harpes appeared at Hughes’ “rowdy groggery,” a few miles west of Knoxville, where they had gone to exercise their brutality before leaving Tennessee. Hughes, his wife’s two brothers, named Metcalfe, and a man named Johnson, living in Jefferson County, were present when the Harpes, who knew the men, rushed in. Johnson was last seen alive there. A few days later his body was discovered in the Holstein River. It had been ripped open, filled with stones, and thrown into the water. Notwithstanding this excess of caution the stones became loosened and the corpse rose to the surface. When the body was discovered Hughes and the Metcalfes came forth with a declaration that the Harpes had committed the crime. Suspicion fell upon the accusers and as the two Harpes were nowhere to be found, the three men were arrested and put in jail. They were acquitted on trial, due to lack of evidence. The Metcalfes immediately fled the country. A party of “regulators” followed Hughes to his groggery, gave him a whipping, pulled down his house and drove him out of the country. [[12G]]

The killing of Johnson, as far as is known, seems to have been the first of the murders committed by the Harpes. Up to this time they had apparently confined their operations to stealing hogs and horses, and setting fire to houses. They now began a career of ruthless murder which was so bold that it not only terrified the citizens of Tennessee and Kentucky, but also alarmed settlers in many other sections of the Middle West.

The Harpes evidently had arranged to meet their three women associates at some definite point if they should for any reason find it necessary to separate. Shortly after the killing of Johnson the five met in western Virginia, near Cumberland Gap, and there, in December, 1798, they entered Kentucky—the “dark and bloody ground,” to be made even darker by the deeds they were to commit during the next twelve months.

They traveled the Wilderness Road more or less closely, leaving it only when they felt their safety demanded a detour. Their first victim in Kentucky was a peddler named Peyton, whom they encountered near the Cumberland River in what is now Knox County. They killed him and took his horse and some of his goods, but the details of this deed are not known. [[21]]

The outlaws continued along this trail toward Crab Orchard and Stanford, in Lincoln County, and overtook two Marylanders named Paca and Bates. Night came on and it was proposed that the party camp on the first suitable spot. This was agreed upon, but the Harpes managed not to find a desirable place until it grew dark. Suddenly, as if by accident, the brothers changed positions, Big Harpe getting behind Bates and Little Harpe behind Paca, the women walking about thirty feet in the rear. The Harpes fired and the two unfortunate Marylanders fell. Bates died instantly. A few minutes later Paca, who was badly crippled and knocked speechless, attempted to rise. Big Harpe rushed up to the struggling man, “splitting open his head with a hatchet or tomahawk he carried in his belt.” The Harpes, being in need of some clothing, appropriated only such garments as were immediately useful. They took, however, all the gold and silver and Continental coin found in possession of their victims. [[121]]

The villains continued along the Wilderness Road and one night in December, 1798, arrived at a public house kept by John Farris in what is now Rockcastle County, not many miles from Crab Orchard. With them came Stephen Langford, of Virginia, who was on his way to Crab Orchard to visit a kinsman and to consider making that locality his home. Langford probably had not met the Harpes until that morning. The story of what took place after they met was related about a quarter of a century later by Judge James Hall, who, in his day, ranked among the best living authors in America, and whose statements were then, and have been ever since, cited as high authority. His story of their encounter with Langford was first published in August, 1825, in The Port Folio. After making some slight revisions in his “Story of the Harpes” he republished the sketch in 1828 in his Letters from the West, from which book his account of the Langford tragedy is here quoted:

“In the autumn of the year 1799, a young gentleman, named Langford, of a respectable family in Mecklenburgh County, Virginia, set out from this state for Kentucky, with the intention of passing through the Wilderness, as it was then called, by the route generally known as Boone’s Trace. On reaching the vicinity of the Wilderness, a mountainous and uninhabited tract, which at that time separated the settled parts of Kentucky from those of Virginia, he stopped to breakfast at a public house near Big Rockcastle River. Travelers of this description—any other indeed than hardy wood men—were unwilling to pass singly through this lonely region; and they generally waited on its confines for others, and traveled through in parties. Mr. Langford, either not dreading danger, or not choosing to delay, determined to proceed alone. While breakfast was preparing, the Harpes and their women came up. Their appearance denoted poverty, with but little regard to cleanliness; two very indifferent horses, with some bags swung across them, and a rifle gun or two, comprised nearly their whole equipage. Squalid and miserable, they seemed objects of pity, rather than of fear, and their ferocious glances were attributed more to hunger than to guilty passion. They were entire strangers in that neighborhood, and, like Mr. Langford, were about to cross the Wilderness. When breakfast was served, the landlord, as was customary at such places in those times, invited all the persons who were assembled in the common, perhaps the only room of his little inn, to sit down; but the Harpes declined, alleging their want of money as the reason. Langford, who was of a lively, generous disposition, on hearing this, invited them to partake of the meal at his expense; they accepted the invitation, and ate voraciously. When they had thus refreshed themselves, and were about to renew their journey, Mr. Langford called for the bill, and in the act of discharging it imprudently displayed a handful of silver. They then set out together.

“A few days after, some men who were conducting a drove of cattle to Virginia, by the same road which had been traveled by Mr. Langford and the Harpes, had arrived within a few miles of Big Rockcastle River, when their cattle took fright, and, quitting the road, rushed down a hill into the woods. In collecting them, the drovers discovered the dead body of a man concealed behind a log, and covered with brush and leaves. It was now evident that the cattle had been alarmed by the smell of blood in the road, and, as the body exhibited marks of violence, it was at once suspected that a murder had been perpetrated but recently. The corpse was taken to the same house where the Harpes had breakfasted, and recognized to be that of Mr. Langford, whose name was marked upon several parts of his dress. Suspicion fell upon the Harpes, who were pursued and apprehended near Crab Orchard. They were taken to Stanford....”

The killing of the two Marylanders and the peddler was not known until many weeks thereafter. The report of the murder of Langford spread like wildfire. The Kentucky Gazette, January 2, 1799, in a characteristically brief paragraph gave sufficient details of the discovery of the body on December 14 to impress its readers with the seriousness of an act of barbarity that might be repeated by the Harpes at any time. “We also learn,” says this paragraph, “that Mr. Ballenger is in pursuit of them, with a determined resolution never to quit the chase until he has secured them.”

Captain Joseph Ballenger, the organizer and leader of the pursuing party, was a prominent merchant of Stanford, Lincoln County. He and his men trailed the Harpes and their women to the neighborhood of what was then Carpenter’s Station, a settlement near the present town of Hustonville and about eight miles southwest of Stanford. There Ballenger discovered them sitting on a log, evidently confident that no one could detect their whereabouts. [[12F]] The pursuers rushed on them so suddenly that resistance or escape was impossible.[5]

The five prisoners were taken to Stanford, placed in jail and, about ten days later, tried before the Court of Quarter Sessions.

Hall’s story of the frontier tragedy, based on personal accounts that had survived for a quarter of a century, has already been given. It is brief and is correct as far as it goes, but while Hall was hearing it from the lips of men who had it from those concerned with the vengeance of the law, there lay in the custody of the records of the backwoods court of Lincoln County, the grim details of that crime of base ingratitude and cruelty in solitude which so shook the Wilderness. They had lain there forgotten more than a century when they were found and examined in 1918. Yellowed with age, written with the goose-quill pen of that period in a penmanship characteristic of the pioneers, a jumble of half narrative, half legal style, much of which, however, is in use in courts today, these records of a terrible episode in history are eloquent with interest.

The piling up of item on item of court forms, of testimony laboriously written out and signed, of official jail accounts for the handling of the criminals, tells in its own way every detail of a crime committed in fancied obscurity yet which by a series of fortunate circumstances, was to blaze into a notoriety that set all the West on fire with fear and horror. One who holds these long-forgotten records in his hands and curiously searches them could, with patience and without the aid of imagination, build up the story of frontier life and the people who lived it. The story would show that the power of observation exercised by some of the pioneers was equal to any ascribed to a Sherlock Holmes. It would be a story of chance incidents woven into chains of circumstances that were to reveal crime with unerring certainty—a story of the capture of the criminals, of their life in jail, and of the destiny by which each of the three women involved was to have her only child born to her in that frontier jail, the branded fruit of awful parentage. The mute entries in pounds, shillings, and pence for every item, set down on these yellow pages without malice or comment, tell their part of the story as implacably and dispassionately as fate itself.[6]

These records show that all the Harpes gave their name as “Roberts,” except Betsey Harpe, the supplementary wife of Big Harpe, whose name is given as “Elizabeth Walker.” Five witnesses appeared against them, two of whom—John Farris and his daughter-in-law, Jane Farris—lived in the house near Rockcastle River where Thomas Langford, or Lankford, was last seen alive. The fugitives were captured December 25, 1798. On January 4, 1799, they appeared before the three judges of the Lincoln County Court of Quarter Sessions, as it is so recorded, by Willis Green, the clerk, on the twenty-second page of the Record Book marked “September 1798–March 1802:”

“At a court called and held at Lincoln Courthouse on Friday the 4th day of January 1799 for the examination of Micajah Roberts, Wiley Roberts, Susanna Roberts, Sally Roberts, and Elizabeth Walker for the murder of Thomas Langford.

“Present Hugh Logan, William Montgomery, and Nathan Huston, Esquires, [the three judges who presided].

“The said [naming the five prisoners] were lead to the bar in custody of the Sheriff and charged with feloniously and of their malice aforethought murdering and robbing a certain Thomas Langford on Wednesday the 12th day of December 1798 on the road leading from Kentucky to Virginia through the Wilderness, and denied the fact, sundry evidences were therefore examined and the prisoners heard in their defense.”

Five witnesses appeared on behalf of the Commonwealth. The statement of each is written on loose leaves and signed in the presence of Thomas Montgomery, the official notary, and all were therefore in a form to be turned over to a higher court should it become necessary to do so. The affidavit of Captain Ballenger, who lead the pursuing party, is here quoted in full:

“Joseph Ballenger of lawful age, and sworn, deposeth and saith that at about the 19th or 20th day of December 1798 he heard that a murder had been committed in the Wilderness on the body of a certain Thomas Langford, as supposed; that he, at the request of James Blain the Attorney General of this Commonwealth with others (including Thomas Welsh) went in pursuit of some persons suspected of being the murderers who had passed through Lincoln County; that they went to the house of John Blain in Lincoln County where they heard that persons similar to those they were in pursuit of had left Brush Creek, a branch of Green River, and passed over to the Rolling Fork of Salt River; that they pursued them and overtook five persons, the same who this day on their examinations were called Micajah Roberts, Wiley Roberts, Susanna Roberts, Sally Roberts, and Elizabeth Walker; that after taking them into custody they proceeded to search them and found in their possession a pocket book with the name of Thomas Langford, a great coat, a grey coating cloth, a short coat—in the pocket of it were broken pieces of glass—a mixed colored long coat, a pair of breeches, a shaving glass, a whip, a pair of wrappers, and a horse, this day proved to be the property of Thomas Langford said to be the person murdered in the Wilderness, and that they found also a Free Mason’s apron and many other things in their possession said to be the property of Thomas Langford. Further saith not.”

David Irby, in his sworn statement, explained that: “he and Thomas Langford set out from Pittsylvania County in Virginia for Kentucky, they traveled five days journey together and sometimes one paid their traveling expense and sometimes the other, all of which Thomas Langford marked down in his pocket book. Before they crossed Inglish’s Ferry [Ingle’s Ferry in what is now Montgomery Country, Virginia] they got a half bushel of oats which the deponent paid for and also their ferryage at Inglish’s Ferry in Wythe County (Virginia) the deponent purchased a cheese which Thomas Langford set down in his pocket book, he says that the pocket book now before the examining court is the said pocket book which Thomas Langford had when they traveled together in Tennessee State. [The trail from Virginia to Cumberland Gap extended into northeastern Tennessee before reaching Kentucky]. The deponent and Thomas Langford separated when they agreed to meet at Frankfort in Kentucky; the deponent heard in Kentucky that the said Thomas Langford was murdered on his way to Kentucky, he set out towards the place where the crime was committed and went to the place where the person who was killed was buried and he, the deponent, and John Farris unburied and raised the decedent and found him to be Thomas Langford.”

What Irby saw and heard he further declared convinced him that the murdered man was no other than his recent traveling companion.

John Farris Sr. swore that on Tuesday night, December 12, 1798: “a man came to his house on the Wilderness Road who called himself Thomas Langford and who, after he had told him his name, he recollected to have been acquainted with in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in the youth of Thomas Langford.”

He said his guest remained all night and started the next morning for the settlements. In the meantime, Farris had: “an opportunity of viewing his clothing and actually did very curiously examine the outward clothing of the said Thomas Langford.” A few days later he heard that “a man was killed on the Wilderness Road, and on inquiring into the circumstances he was induced to believe that the person murdered was Thomas Langford ... but not being fully satisfied that the person found dead was Thomas Langford, he went to the coroner of Lincoln County, obtained from him an order—the said coroner having before that time held an inquest on the body—and in pursuance of the said order, in company with David Irby and Abraham Anthony who buried the said Thomas Langford as he supposed, raised him and inspected him ... and that the whole visage of the person, by him and others raised, answered his idea of Thomas Langford, but he knew him more particularly by the loss of a tooth in the front part of his jaw.”

His daughter-in-law, Jane Farris, wife of William Farris, also identified various things found in the possession of the outlaws as the property of the murdered man. She evidently observed the actions of the travelers closely, for she states: “Thomas Langford had on leggins at her house and as part of the list of one of them was torn Susan Roberts sewed it to the leggin with white thread.” She adds that the five prisoners and their victim came to the house together and “All appeared very cheerful with each other, Langford seemed to be somewhat intoxicated, he had a small glass bottle which was filled with whiskey at their house which Micajah Roberts and Wiley Roberts paid for.” The six left the Farris house together, but shortly before leaving “there was some misunderstanding between Thomas Langford and Micajah and Wiley Roberts ... and Mr. Langford said to Mrs. Farris, in the presence of all, that he would not offend her for all in his saddle bags which was worth five hundred pounds.”

The statement made by Thomas Welsh, who was in the pursuing party, is practically the same as Captain Ballenger’s. He, however, adds “there was none of the alteration in the great coat at the time of the finding ... and must have been made by the criminals since they were taken into custody, they having, for several days after they were taken in custody, the possession of the great coat.”

There is nothing in the records to indicate what was said by the prisoners when they were heard in their defense. The decision of the court was that the five prisoners “ought to be tried for the murder of the said Thomas Langford before the Judges of the District Court holden for the Danville District at the next April Term, and it is ordered that they be remanded to jail.”

Thomas Todd, the prosecuting attorney, in the requirement of the law, “acknowledged himself indebted” to the Governor of the Commonwealth “in the sum of ten thousand pounds current money” should he fail to appear before the judges on the first day of the April term of the Danville District Court then and there to prosecute the prisoners. The witnesses “acknowledged themselves severally indebted ... to the sum of five hundred pounds current money” should they fail to appear and give evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth.[7]

On January 5 the five prisoners were taken by the sheriff and a guard of seven men to Danville, there to await trial before the District Court in April. The distance from Stanford to Danville is about ten miles. Neither history nor tradition tells how this cavalcade made the trip over the trail, whether afoot, on horses, or in wagons, or by a combination of these means. The condition then reached by the women may have necessitated the use of a conveyance for them. This party of thirteen doubtless attracted much attention along the road, for five prisoners, of whom three were women, was a sight not often seen. The ten mile trip to Danville made by the guards with the captured Harpes along this historic highway, winding through an almost unbroken forest, readily lends itself to anyone’s fancy.[8]

Evidently John Biegler, “Jailer of the District of Danville,” to whom the prisoners were delivered and who had them in his custody several months, felt there was some likelihood of his charges escaping. His account against the state shows that on January 20, 1799, he bought “Two horse locks to chain the men’s feet to the ground, 12s. and 1 bolt, 3s.” It seems to have become necessary to fasten the front door more firmly, for, on February 13, he purchased “one lock for front jail door, 18s.” Two weeks later he bought three pounds of nails for 6s. “for the use of the jail.” The expense items further show that four men, two at a time, were employed to guard the prisoners.

But with all these precautions, the two Harpes escaped on March 16, leaving their three women and two new-born infants behind. There is nothing in the court records indicating how they escaped. The jailer’s expense account merely shows an item dated March 19: “Mending the wall in jail where the prisoners escaped, 12s.” Breazeale, forty years later, wrote—but cites no authority for his statement: “the jailer, soon after their escape, resigned his office, left the jail, bought a farm and settled himself in the country where he very shortly became wealthy—no one ever knew with certainty by what means, but the general suspicion was that he had acquired his wealth by receiving a large bribe from the Harpes to permit them to escape.”

How they escaped was doubtless a subject of much conjecture and discussion. Colonel Daniel Trabue in his Autobiography says that the two men “took two guns from the guard at Danville.” Whether or not the guard or guards were present and resisted the prisoners when they took the two guns is not stated. Judge James Hall, continuing his brief account of the Langford murder, quoted a few pages back, gives no details, but simply ends with the statement: “They were taken to Stanford where they were examined and committed by an enquiring court, sent to Danville for safe keeping, and probably for trial. Previous to the time of trial they made their escape.”

Nor do the records contain any hint as to how the two men passed the time of their imprisonment. Lyman C. Draper, in his “Sketch of the Harpes,” says that shortly before his escape Big Harpe, contending it would answer the ends of justice as well, proposed to whip at fisticuffs the two best fighters in Kentucky, provided he be set free if he succeeded in whipping the men, and should he fail he would abide by the decision of the court.

The trial of the three women was set for April 15. But during the hundred days they were immured in the log jail there was happening to them the immortal trial that comes to their sex under all conditions. Yoked as they were irregularly, pursuing as they had the lives of the hunted and outcast, they had to bear, in the rigors of winter, in abandonment and in prison charged with murder, the burdens of motherhood—and to such fathers! These items from the jailer’s accounts of his expenditures on their behalf tell a story with which imagination is free to work:

“February 8, ¼ lb. Hyson tea, 3s. 9d., 1 lb. sugar, 1s. 6d. for Betsey Walker she being brought to bed by a son the preceding night, 5s. 3d.—February 10, ¼ lb. ginger, 1s. 1d., 1 lb. sugar, 1s. 6d., for ditto, and paid cash to the wife and other assistance 21s. £1. 3s. 7d.”—total £1. 8s. 10d.

“March 7, ⅛ lb. tea, 1s. 10d., 1 lb. sugar, 1s. 6d., for the use of Susanna Harpe brought to bed by a daughter the preceding night, 3s. 4d. Paid cash midwife for ditto, 18s.”—total £1. 1s. 4d.

“April 9, ¼ lb. tea, 3s. 9d., 1 lb. sugar, 1s. 6d., 1 quart whiskey, 1s. 6d. for the use of Sally Harp brought to bed the preceding night by a daughter.”—total 6s. 9d.

It will be noted that when the third child was born a week before the time set for trial—the second was about a month old and the other two months old.

Such was the state of affairs when, on Monday, April 15, 1799, the clerk turned to page 314 of the Danville District Court Order Book and there began his record of the trial of the three women indicted for the murder of Thomas Langford. The court was presided over by Judge James G. Hunter and by Judge Samuel McDowell, who served in the absence of Judge Stephen Ormsby. “Susanna Roberts, spinster of Lincoln County was set to the bar in custody of the jailer,” so runs the record, and pleaded “not guilty;” but “for reasons appearing to the court” her trial was postponed until the third day of the term. “Elizabeth Walker” and “Sally Roberts” were not called on to appear personally that day before the judges, but their cases were postponed until the 18th.

On the 17th “Susanna Roberts” again appeared in court. A jury of twelve men was sworn, which, after hearing the same evidence given in Stanford, presented in the form of written affidavits, declared her “guilty.”

On the 18th another jury was sworn and “Elizabeth Walker, spinster of Lincoln County,” was tried on the same evidence presented against “Susanna Roberts,” but found “not guilty.” The court proceedings of that afternoon show that the judge “saith he will not further prosecute the said Sally Roberts (spinster of Lincoln County) ... and therefore it is considered by the court that she be acquitted.”

Thus, with the same evidence against each woman, one was found “guilty,” and one “not guilty” and one was “acquitted.”

On the 19th Susanna, who had been found guilty, appealed for a new trial and it was granted. The Attorney General, however, concluded not to prosecute her, and, at his suggestion, the clerk was ordered to record “certain of the reasons which moved him to enter into nolle prosequi in this case ... to-wit: Upon considering the circumstances attending the case of Susanna Roberts and although she has been found guilty of the charge in the indictment contained by a verdict of her peers, yet as Eliza Walker has been tried on the same indictment, on which trial the said Eliza was found not guilty and the same proof produced against her as was produced against the said Susanna, and in consequence also of the Court having granted a new trial and from the probability [of the evidence] which would be produced on the trial of the said Susanna at the next term by the two other women, in the same indictment contained, who are acquitted and discharged, operating in favor of the prisoner, and also by the advice of the prosecutor and of the Court, and also to save to the Commonwealth the expenses which attend her long detention and further prosecution, I have been induced to direct the Clerk to enter a nolle prosequi as to the said Susanna Roberts.”[9]

The Harpes—Renewal of the Terror

What had happened to the Harpes and their women was a natural outcome of the frontier outlook upon life. The three mothers had gained the sympathy of the court and the community in their apparent distress and helplessness. It was believed that they had obtained a happy release from their barbarous masters. It is probable that many of the persons who now helped in the hunt for the escaped Harpes did so not because they were highway murderers and should therefore be shot or hanged, but because they deserved particular punishment for their brutal conduct toward the young women. At any rate the settlements were united in the pursuit of the two men, who had so curiously escaped.

The acquitted women declared that, above all things, they desired to return to Knoxville and there start life over again. A collection of clothes and money was made among the citizens of Danville and an old mare was given to help them on their way to Tennessee. The three women, each with a bundle over her shoulder and a child under her arm, and the old mare loaded down with clothes and bedding, left the jail one morning on what was considered no easy journey even when undertaken with good horses and the best of equipment. They walked down the street in Indian file, led by the jailer, who accompanied them to the edge of town to point out the road that led through Crab Orchard to Tennessee. These forlorn and dejected travelers, however, had covered less than thirty miles when they changed their course and went down along the banks of Green River. A few days later they traded their horse for a canoe and then went down the stream and were soon lost sight of by the spies who attempted to watch them. [[12F]]

The brutal killing of Langford had stirred the country for almost two months, and now that the murderers had escaped and the gnawed bones of the two Marylanders were found, with all evidence pointing to the Harpes as the perpetrators of this terrible murder, the citizens became even more enraged. They were aroused to the realization that the villains must be captured and disposed of at once. The case required prompt action and any and all methods that might bring about the extermination of the Harpes were endorsed.

On March 28, 1799, The Kentucky Gazette published the following paragraph: “The criminals in the Danville district jail for the murder of Mr. Langford, (as mentioned in our paper of the 2nd of January last) have made their escape. By an order from W. E. Strong, Esq., a justice of the peace for Mercer County, all sheriffs and constables are commanded to take and re-commit them.”

An entry in the Danville District Court Order Book, page 370, under date of April 22, 1799, reads: “It is ordered that the Commonwealth’s writ of capias issue from the clerk’s office of this Court to the Sheriff of Lincoln County commanding him to take Micajah Roberts and Wiley Roberts who have lately broken the jail of this District and are now running at large and them, the said Micajah Roberts and Wiley Roberts, safely to keep so that he have their bodies before the Judges of the District Court holden for the Danville District on the first day of their August Term, to answer for the felony and murder of a certain Thomas Langford whereof they stand indicted.”

Lynching parties had been organized since the middle of March and in the meantime a committee was sent to James Garrard, Governor of Kentucky, presenting to him the necessity of capturing the outlaws. A memorandum on this subject in the Executive Journal, entered in the month of April, states that “the governor authorized Josh Ballenger to pursue them into the state of Tennessee and other states, and to apply to the executive authorities of such states to deliver them up.”

Ballenger and his men began their chase before they received official notice of the governor’s action, and were soon on the trail. Near the headwaters of Rolling Fork, a branch of Salt River, they suddenly found themselves face to face with the Harpes, who, although surprised, were prepared to shoot. The pursuers retreated in confusion and the Harpes, taking advantage of the situation, made their escape. Henry Scaggs, one of the party, suggested that the crowd go to his farm and, with the aid of his dogs, continue the chase. Scaggs was one of the “Long Hunters” who came to Kentucky in 1770 with Colonel James Knox and a pioneer who had ever since been looked upon as “a valiant man in battle and a great hunter.” Urged by him they resumed the pursuit and continued it until late that night, when most of the men, becoming discouraged, left the party because the trail of the Harpes led them through very thick and almost impenetrable cane.

A few men, led by Ballenger, continued the search, but in a section where the heavy cane was no impediment. Scaggs, believing the canebrake should be penetrated, went to a “log rolling” a few miles north of the home of Colonel Daniel Trabue, and there, with the aid of Major James Blain, tried to organize another party. But the men declared that the cane was too thick and the chances of capture too slight to justify the risk, and the “log rolling” went on. Scaggs then—on or about April 10—rode to the farm of Colonel Daniel Trabue, a Revolutionary soldier and one of the most prominent and altruistic of Kentucky pioneers, who lived about three miles west of what is now Columbia, Adair County.

While Scaggs was discussing his plans with Colonel Trabue, the Colonel was patiently awaiting the return of his son, John Trabue, a lad of thirteen, who had been sent to one of the neighbors to borrow some flour and seed beans. The boy was accompanied by a small dog, and, in the midst of the discussion, the dog walked into the yard badly wounded. [[12E]] An investigation was immediately made. The neighbor reported that the boy had left the house a few hours before with the flour and beans. All efforts made that night to find him were futile. They began to suspect that he might have been kidnapped by the Harpes. The search continued for many days, but all in vain. Evidence of the Harpes was discovered by George Spears and five other men about fifteen miles southwest of the Trabue farm, near the East Fork of Barren River, where the outlaws had killed a calf and made moccasins out of the skin, leaving their old moccasins behind. The footprints indicated the presence of two men, but there were no signs to show that a boy was with them. [[63]]

Little did the pursuers realize what had actually happened. The innocent lad, walking home over an old buffalo trace, had met the Harpes as they were crossing it. There they killed the little fellow, cut his body to pieces, and threw it into a sinkhole near the path, where it remained hidden about two weeks and was then discovered by accident. The murderers had taken the flour but not the seed beans.

Colonel Trabue, in his autobiography or journal, written some twenty-five years after this tragedy, deplores the fact that the log rollers did not continue the pursuit: “It is a pity they did not go, for then John Trabue might not have been killed.” He adds that these men ever after “reflected very much on themselves for their negligence, and said this ought to be a warning to others hereafter to always do their duty.”

In pioneer times the execution of the law by officials was in many instances an unavoidably slow process, and it therefore frequently became necessary for the law abiding citizens to organize themselves into bands and, by any method the emergency might demand, establish order and safety. No matter how achieved, preserving peace and fighting danger was looked upon by good citizens as the imperative duty of all. Had the then slow-acting laws been relied upon, the sly and quick-traveling Harpes probably would not have been captured for years, and their victims might have been numbered by the hundreds. On the other hand, as suggested by Colonel Trabue, it is possible that had the men who were called upon by Scaggs done what was in those days considered a duty, Langford might have been the last victim of the Harpes and their career ended.

A report that mad dogs were running through the country and were likely to spring from behind any bush or tree at any time could not have alarmed the people more than did the realization that the Harpes had escaped from jail and were killing all who chanced to be in their path. On April 22, the Governor of Kentucky was again appealed to for help, and he immediately signed a proclamation which was published in the Frankfort Palladium on May 2 and May 9, 1799:

“BY THE GOVERNOR, A PROCLAMATION.

“Whereas it has been represented to me that MICAJAH HARP, alias ROBERTS, and WILEY HARP alias ROBERTS, who were confined in the jail of the Danville district under a charge of murder, did on the 16th day of March last, break out of the said jail;—and whereas the ordinary methods of pursuit have been found ineffectual for apprehending and restoring to confinement the said fugitives, I have judged it necessary to the safety and welfare of the community and to the maintenance of justice, to issue this my proclamation and do hereby offer and promise a reward of THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS to any person who shall apprehend and deliver into the custody of the jailer of the Danville district the said MICAJAH HARP alias ROBERTS and a like reward of THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS for apprehending and delivering as aforesaid the said WILEY HARP alias ROBERTS, to be paid out of the public treasury agreeably to law.

“In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and have caused the seal of the Commonwealth to be affixed.

“Done at Frankfort on the 22nd day of April in the year of our Lord 1799, and of the Commonwealth the seventh.

“(L. S.)
“By the Governor James Garrard
“Harry Toulmin, Secretary.

“MICAJAH HARP alias ROBERTS is about six feet high—of a robust make, and is about 30 or 32 years of age. He has an ill-looking, downcast countenance, and his hair is black and short, but comes very much down his forehead. He is built very straight and is full fleshed in the face. When he went away he had on a striped nankeen coat, dark blue woolen stockings,—leggins of drab cloth and trousers of the same as the coat.

“WILEY HARP alias ROBERTS is very meagre in his face, has short black hair but not quite so curly as his brother’s; he looks older, though really younger, and has likewise a downcast countenance. He had on a coat of the same stuff as his brother’s, and had a drab surtout coat over the close-bodied one. His stockings were dark blue woolen ones, and his leggins of drab cloth.”

Before this proclamation by the Governor had time to circulate throughout the state, report reached the people that the Harpes had killed a man named Dooley, near what is now Edmonton, Metcalfe County, [[28]] and had butchered another named Stump, who lived on Barren River about eight miles below Bowling Green. [[12D]]

Stump was fishing, and seeing smoke rising on the opposite side of the river, a little distance from the bank, presumed some new arrivals were preparing to settle. He stepped into his cabin and got his violin, and then crossed the stream to greet the newcomers. He was clad in his shirt and trousers, without hat or shoes, but he probably felt that what he lacked in wearing apparel would be more than counterbalanced by the hearty welcome to the Wilderness he was prepared to give his new neighbors. So, in this scant attire, and with a turkey over his shoulder, a string of fish in one hand and his fiddle under his arm, he entered their camp. He probably never realized that his good intentions had led him into the hands of the Harpes. They stabbed him, cut open his body, filled it with stones and threw it into the river. [[12F]] Some of Stump’s neighbors, says The Kentucky Gazette, were suspected of having committed the murder and were taken into custody, but an investigation proved their innocence and also proved beyond all doubt that the Harpes were the perpetrators of the crime.

The criminals continued their raid down Barren River into the lower Green River country to a point near Henderson, Kentucky, and then, either by land or water, rapidly worked their way to Diamond Island in the Ohio and to Cave-in-Rock, in or near any of which places they evidently had arranged to meet their women.

How many men, women, and children these two brothers killed and what course they followed while rushing through the lower Green River country and the Ohio Valley between Henderson and Cave-in-Rock will never be known. Shortly before reaching the Cave, they committed a murder in Illinois at the mouth of Saline River, about twelve miles above Cave-in-Rock. Twenty-six years later this incident was briefly summed up in the Illinois Gazette, published at Shawneetown: “There are persons living in this country whom we have heard recount the story of the Harpes with great minuteness, and the place is still pointed out, on the plantation of Mr. Potts, near the mouth of the Saline River, where they shot two or three persons in cold blood by the fire where they had encamped.” [[56]]

The many reports—some false and others only too true—of the inhuman acts committed by the Harpes had, in the meantime, put every community on its guard. Captain Ballenger, after pursuing the outlaws a few weeks, found that, owing to the many conflicting rumors, he had been thrown off the trail and was moving in a direction opposite the one taken by the Harpes and, therefore, he gave up the chase.

Captain Young, of Mercer County, in the meantime organized a company with the determination to exterminate the Harpes and all other outlaws, or at least drive them out of the country. Commenting on Captain Young’s expedition, Edmund L. Starling, author of A History of Henderson County, Kentucky, writes: “Captain Young and his men recognized the perils of their undertaking; they understood the wily machinations of the enemy, and, with blood for blood emblazoned upon their banner, started upon their mission of capture or death, utterly regardless of their own personal comforts or the hardships attending a campaign in such a wild and comparatively unmarked country.”

Having met with success in Mercer, Captain Young and his men continued their pursuit and finally reached Henderson County. There they were joined by a number of citizens. The combined forces swept over the entire country, including Diamond Island, driving the outlaws out of that part of Kentucky across the Ohio River into Illinois. A number of the criminals fled to Cave-in-Rock. The character of the men who usually centered at the Cave was well known to the refugees, for many of them had helped to make the place notorious.

Captain Young and his outlaw exterminators having covered the territory they set out to relieve, left Henderson County and returned to Mercer County—a distance of more than one hundred and fifty miles—and were there given a grand ovation. [[124]]

Governor Garrard, however, must have felt somewhat apprehensive regarding the return of the Harpes, for the Executive Journal shows that on June 7 he “deputed Alexander McFarland and brothers” to take charge of “these inveterate enemies of human happiness” should they be found “in any adjacent state.”

It seems quite likely that while in the Danville jail the Harpe women, by some means, sent a message to, or received one from, “old man Roberts,” the father-in-law of Big Harpe, who then lived in Russell County, Kentucky. At any rate, as already stated, they started down Green River shortly after leaving Danville. They paddled their way down that river until they reached its mouth, a distance of more than two hundred miles. After stopping in the neighborhood of Henderson, they continued down the Ohio about ninety miles to Cave-in-Rock. It was in this section of the Ohio Valley that they expected, sooner or later, to meet the Harpes. Tradition has it that shortly after the three women arrived at Cave-in-Rock two of them proceeded up the river, one to Diamond Island and the other to a neighborhood south of Henderson, while the third remained at the Cave; and in this manner they watchfully awaited the arrival of the Harpes. The two women who had been loitering near Henderson and Diamond Island, posing under assumed names as widows, either had left their watching places voluntarily or were forced to flee from them with their husbands. At any rate, they finally arrived at Cave-in-Rock and there, in a very short time, the two Harpes and their three women and three children were once more united.

As a result of Captain Young’s raid through Henderson County, Cave-in-Rock became somewhat crowded with outlaws. Realizing that their number was too great to maneuver with any secrecy and safety, many left the place voluntarily, some continuing down the river, others working their way inland, and a few remaining “to pursue their nefarious avocation.” [[124]]

The Harpes, however, were driven from the Cave. This aggregation of outlaws was doubtless a depraved conglomeration of evil doers, but in the Harpes they found two human brutes beyond even their toleration.

There is a tradition to the effect that the Harpes had been at the Cave only a few days when they brazenly related the performance of an act which, to their surprise, was not cheered by their companions. A flatboat had come down the river and its passengers, not realizing they were near the famous rendezvous of outlaws, landed about a quarter of a mile above the Cave at the foot of a small bluff, later known as Cedar Point. Among the travelers on board were a young man and his sweetheart who, while their companions were making some repairs to the boat, strolled to the top of the cliff and there sat down upon a rock. The view from that point is still beautiful and was probably even more so in primeval days. While the two lovers were sitting on the edge of the cliff with their backs to the wild woods behind them, leisurely considering the landscape, or the life before them, the two Harpes quietly approached from the forest and, without a word of warning, pushed the lovers off the cliff. They fell on a sandy beach forty feet below and, to the surprise of all, escaped unhurt. The Harpes returned to the Cave, and, as already stated, boasted, but without the expected effect, of the prank they had played.

Shortly after this, two families, carrying a supply of tools and provisions, were floating down the Ohio in a flatboat, intending to settle in Smithland, but when they came near Cave-in-Rock they were captured and robbed by the outlaws. The two or three passengers who were not killed in the battle preceding the robbery, were brought ashore. The Harpes, seeing an opportunity to give their fellow criminals an exhibition of brutality, stripped one of the captives, tied him to a blindfolded horse and led the animal to the top of the bluff over the Cave. By wild shouts and other means the horse was frightened and at the same time forced to run toward the edge of the cliff, and before long the blindfolded animal with the naked man tied on its back ran off the bluff and fell a distance of more than one hundred feet to the rough and rocky shore below. Then the Harpes pointed to the mangled remains of man and horse as evidence of another triumph over law and order. Their fellow cave dwellers probably had never seen such a sight before and evidently did not care to witness one again. It is likely that only sympathy for their women and babies saved the Harpes from death at the hands of the other outlaws. All the Harpes left the Cave at once.

It is probable that their hasty departure took place some time in May, 1799. Neither history nor tradition tells in what direction they fled. The people of Kentucky doubtless concluded that since they had driven these outlaws across the Ohio into Illinois, they would continue their flight north or proceed by flatboat to some section along the lower Mississippi.

About the middle of July east Tennessee was shocked to hear of the cruel murder of a farmer named Bradbury, who was killed along the road in Roane County, about twenty-five miles west of Knoxville on what has since been known as Bradbury’s Ridge. [[21]] The Harpes were not suspected of the crime, for the impression prevailed that they had fled permanently and, although their whereabouts was unknown, it not only seemed quite improbable but almost impossible that they had returned in so short a time. It soon developed, however, that they actually had made their appearance again, for a few days later—July 22, 1799—they murdered a young son of Chesley Coffey, on Black Oak Ridge, about eight miles northwest of Knoxville. One version has it that the boy was hunting strayed cows and while in the woods was slain by the Harpes, who took his gun and the shoes he wore, and left his body lying under a tree. [[12G]] Another account is that “Young Coffey was riding along the road one evening to get a fiddle. These terrible men smeared a tree with his brains, making out that his horse had run against the tree.” [[63]]

Two days later they killed a man named William Ballard, who lived within a few miles of Knoxville. “They cut him open and, putting stones in his body, sank it in the river.” [[63]] It was believed by the neighbors that the Harpes mistook Ballard for Hugh Dunlap, who had been active in endeavoring to arrest them the year before. [[21]]

The Harpes continued their course northward. They crossed Emery River, near what is now Harriman Junction, and, while their women were resting for a few days in some secluded spot, the two men skirmished alone in Morgan County. On July 29, on the spur of a mountain since known as Brassel’s Knob, they met James and Robert Brassel. James Brassel was afoot and carried a gun; Robert was on horseback and unarmed. The Harpes, who were riding good horses, pretended to be in a hurry, but seeming to have a desire to comply with the custom of civilized travelers, slowed up and saluted the men with the question: “What’s the news?” The Brassels related in detail an account of the murder of William Ballard and young Coffey. The Harpes replied that they had not only heard of these tragedies, but that they were now in pursuit of the men who had committed the crimes. They further asserted that they were going to wait for the rest of the pursuing party which was coming on behind, and requested the Brassels to join them when the reinforcements arrived. To this the two innocent brothers willingly agreed. They had no more than done so when Big Harpe, accusing them of being the Harpe brothers, seized James Brassel’s gun, threw it on the ground and immediately began tying his hands and feet. Robert, suspecting that he and his brother had fallen into the hands of the dreaded Harpes themselves, jumped from his horse and attempted to obtain his brother’s gun in an effort to rescue him. In this he failed and, realizing that his only hope of escape was flight, he ran into the woods, leaving his horse behind. He was pursued by Little Harpe, whom he succeeded in outrunning, and, although shot at, he was unhurt.

Robert continued his flight about ten miles when he met a Mr. Dale, who, with two or three other men and Mrs. Dale, was traveling toward Knoxville. He persuaded them to return with him to the place where he had left his brother. The men had only one gun among them for their protection; nevertheless they tried to help the bewildered man. When they reached the spot in the woods a short distance from the road where Robert had left his brother, they were horrified to find that James was not only dead, but that his body had been “much beaten and his throat cut.” His gun was broken to pieces. The tracks indicated that the two Harpes had gone toward Knoxville, from which direction they were coming when they overtook the Brassel brothers. After the pursuers had followed the tracks a few miles, they were much surprised to find themselves running upon the Harpes coming back. At the time the two Brassels were attacked by the Harpes the outlaws were alone and had with them nothing but their guns. But now, on their return, they were accompanied by their women and children, heavily loaded with clothing and provisions, apparently prepared for a long journey and for battle and siege.

When this fierce procession of men and women on horseback came in sight, one of Dale’s men suggested that if the approaching cavalcade showed no signs of fight, no effort to arrest them should be made. This immediately met with the approval of the majority. No attempt to fight was made. The murderers, in the words of Colonel Trabue, “looked very awful at them” and then passed on. The pursuers, too, continued their journey for a while in silence, lest any words they should utter might be overheard and mistaken by the Harpes as a threat. Robert Brassel complained bitterly of the lack of courage displayed by the men he had relied upon to help capture or kill the murderers of his brother. [[63]]

Thus, uninterrupted, the two Harpes and their wives, with their stolen horses and other plunder, and with an ever-increasing desire to shed blood, continued their expedition to Kentucky. Somewhere near the Tennessee-Kentucky line, either in what is now Pickett County, Tennessee, or Clinton County, Kentucky, they killed John Tully, who lived in that section of Cumberland County which in 1835 became a part of Clinton County.

In the meantime citizens of east Tennessee were alarmed. They now fully realized that the Harpes had actually returned and were likely to appear any day in any neighborhood. Every man carried his gun, his dirk, or carving knife, and made every preparation to slay the monsters.

Robert Brassel resumed his pursuit of the Harpes and was soon joined by William Wood and others. When they arrived near the farm of John Tully they met Nathaniel Stockton and a number of neighbors looking for Tully, who they supposed was lost in the woods. The search continued and “near the road they found Mr. Tully, killed, and hidden under a log.” [[63]] The company buried him and some of the men agreed they would pursue the murderers.[10]

Immediately after it was discovered that Tully had been murdered, William Wood and Nathaniel Stockton started afoot to Colonel Daniel Trabue’s farm, a distance of forty miles. They suspected that because Colonel Trabue had been active in the pursuit of the Harpes after his son had been murdered, the monsters were on their way to his home and store and might be captured there. They related to the Colonel the details of the crimes the Harpes had recently committed and he, before they had finished, decided to forward the news to the governor of Kentucky. In order to impress the governor with the fact that the report was not another wild rumor, Colonel Trabue, who was a justice of the peace in Green County, prepared a written statement, giving a brief account of the recent acts of the Harpes, as related to him by Nathaniel Stockton and William Wood, and forwarded it to him in the form of an affidavit. [[63]]

This sworn statement, consisting of about five hundred words, was published in the Kentucky Gazette on August 15, 1799. From it some of the details of the three crimes just related were taken. It begins with the declaration: “About the middle of July there was a man killed by the name of Hardin, about three miles below Knoxville: he was ripped open and stones put in his belly, and he was thrown into Holston River.” After briefly noting the circumstances and the exact date of the killing of Coffey, James Brassel, and John Tully, it calls attention to the fact that the night after the Harpes murdered Tully “they passed by old Mr. Stockton’s going toward their father’s-in-law, old Mr. Roberts.” A point of great human interest is the concise and vivid description of the two Harpes given in the affidavit prepared by Colonel Trabue: “The big man is pale, dark, swarthy, bushy hair, had a reddish gun stock—the little man had a blackish gunstock, with a silver star with four straight points—they had short sailor’s coats, very dirty, and grey greatcoats.”

Colonel Trabue, in his Autobiography, does not give a copy of his affidavit, but relative to it, he writes: “I sent out that night for some neighbors and made arrangements. We sent one man off the next morning by sunrise to Frankfort to the Governor, that he might have it published in the newspapers. Mr. Wood’s and Mr. Stockton’s statement I wrote down and had them swear to it, what they knew of their own knowledge and what Robert Brassel had told them. I sent another man down to Yellow Banks [should read Red Banks] to General Samuel Hopkins with the news and the statement. I directed the men to go as fast as they could, and spread the news as they went; it was also immediately put in the newspapers. The man I sent to General Hopkins was John Ellis. As he went on he spread the news. He happened to go the same route the Harpes had taken. When they heard of him they pursued and tried to overtake him. Ellis had a good horse and went sixty or seventy miles a day. The whole state got in a great uproar, because it was uncertain which route the murderers would take.”

The two messengers sent by Colonel Trabue rode over trails that wound through a sparsely populated wilderness where danger in one form or another was likely to be encountered at any moment. One rider dashed in a northerly direction about ninety miles, while the other rushed westward twice that distance. Each “spread the news” along his route, and from every settlement he passed, the report—“The Harpes are here”—was hurriedly sent out. The warning, in comparatively little time, reached practically every family in Kentucky and many in Tennessee. The press verified the reports and soon the people saw for themselves in “black and white,” which was then considered the garb of “gospel truth,” that the Harpes had returned to Kentucky and were guilty of crimes even more brutal than any heretofore perpetrated.

The Frankfort Palladium, on August 15, 1799, published the names of four men and on what day in July each was killed by the Harpes, and concludes its paragraph with the statement that “we are happy to hear they are closely pursued and sincerely hope they will ere long meet the punishment which the atrocity of their crimes demands.” The Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette, of Cincinnati, on September 3 published a Frankfort news item giving practically the same facts and expressing the same hope.

Such widespread terror and fear as was aroused by the raid of the Harpes found expression, no doubt, not only in the Kentucky Gazette and the Palladium, but in all the papers published in Kentucky and Tennessee. Stewart’s Kentucky Herald, of Lexington, the Mirror, of Washington, Mason County, Kentucky, and the Gazette and the Impartial Observer, both of Knoxville, Tennessee, were in existence at the time. Careful research in these four papers has failed to reveal any allusion to the Harpes, for the copies available are of other dates than those likely to mention these outlaws in their presentation of current events. It is possible that a number of current newspapers in the east and south printed more or less about the Harpes and thus warned the people of the possibility of their sudden appearance. As we shall see later, the Carolina Gazette, of Charleston, South Carolina, in its issue of October 24, 1799, devoted twenty-five lines to the Harpes. This story, in all probability, was not its first and only paragraph relative to them.

Although the alarm was being spread by the people and the press, and many a man had prepared to slay the outlaws, the report of the latest butchery was soon followed by another. The day after Colonel Trabue sent the messengers to Frankfort and Henderson, the Harpes traveled up Marrowbone Creek and, about twenty-five miles south of Colonel Trabue’s home, stopped at an out-of-the-way place on which John Graves and his thirteen-year-old son were cultivating a crop and making preparations for the rest of the family to join them. [[63]]

The Harpes arrived at their cabin late in the evening and got permission to spend the night. “Early in the morning, probably before the Graveses awoke, they, with Graves’ own axe, split the heads of both open and threw the bodies of both in to the brush fence that surrounded the house.” “There they lay,” writes Draper, in one of his note books, “until some one, seeing so many buzzards around, made an investigation and discovered what had taken place.” [[12E]] This tragedy was announced in the Palladium of August 22, in a paragraph quoted from the Guardian of Freedom, Frankfort, Kentucky. The statement then published is another verification of the notes made by Draper many years later.

From the Graves cabin they traveled north twenty miles or more into Russell County to the home of old man Roberts, the reputed father of the two women Big Harpe claimed as wives. The only reference to this “old Mr. Roberts” is in Colonel Trabue’s affidavit sent to the Governor of Kentucky in August, 1799. Local tradition has nothing to say about Roberts—when he came or left, or where his cabin stood. Evidently he was still living in Russell County in 1802, for in November of that year Reverend Jacob Young, a Methodist preacher, met “a brother-in-law of the infamous Micajah Harpe,” who, although his name is not stated in the preacher’s autobiography, must have been a son of the “old Mr. Roberts” in order to qualify for the connection. At any rate, two of the Harpe women were doubtless invited by their father to remain with him. If, however, such an invitation was not extended, the women would have appealed to him for help had they been inclined to reform, and he, as many other fathers would have done, might have consented to make an effort to lead them from the vile associations into which they had fallen. What these two daughters might and should have done they failed to do. They clung to their companions in crime and with them fled westward south of Green River toward Mammoth Cave and Russellville.

While on the way the Harpes killed a little girl and a negro boy. Writers do not agree as to just where and when these two murders took place. It is likely they were enacted while the Harpes were going to Logan County and that they led up to a third child-murder even more inhuman. The first of these tragedies, as briefly related by Breazeale, is that “they met with a negro boy going to mill, dashed the boy’s brains out against a tree, but left the horse and bag of grain untouched.” The other recorded by Collins is equally brief: “One of their victims was a little girl found at some distance from her home, whose tender age and helplessness would have been protection against any but incarnate fiends.”

They soon reached Logan County. There, according to T. Marshall Smith, they discovered, about eight miles from Drumgool’s station, now Adairville, the two Trisword brothers, who with their wives, several children, and a few black servants, were camping for the night. The next morning before sunrise, while the emigrants were still asleep, the Harpes and two Cherokee Indians made a wild attack on the tent occupied by the travelers and killed the entire party except one of the men, who ran for help. When the rescuing party arrived upon the scene it found the ground covered with the bodies of the dead, some of them badly mangled. While several of the men were occupied burying the dead, others were looking for evidence of the direction the outlaws had taken.

This account, because it lacks verification, is not here presented as one true in its details. It is known, however, that as a result of this tragedy or because of some other atrocity committed about this time by the Harpes, William Stewart, sheriff of Logan County, organized a party of about a dozen men to search for the highwaymen. This pursuing party, having reason to believe that the outlaws were traveling south, rushed toward the Tennessee line. In the meantime, however, the cunning Harpes were working their way northward. They stopped a few hours about three miles northeast of Russellville, on the Samuel Wilson Old Place, about half a mile up Mud River from what is now Duncan’s bridge over Mud River on the Russellville and Morgantown road. There the Harpes watered their horses at the same spring that quenched the thirst of the hundreds of people who a few weeks before attended the Great Revival conducted by the Reverends John and William McGee and James M’Gready. Samuel Wilson, an eye witness, in his description of this religious meeting, says: “Fires were built, cooking begun, and by dark candles lighted and fixed on a hundred trees around and interspersing the ground surrounded by tents, showing forth the first, and as I believe still, one of the most beautiful camp meetings the world has ever seen.” This was one of the first of the Great Revival meetings that so spontaneously stirred what was then called the West. The Harpes doubtless knew or inferred from the condition of the place that it had been used recently for religious purposes. [[121]]

The Harpe men had no patience with their children and often reprimanded the three women, declaring that the crying infants would some day be the means of pursuers detecting their presence. They frequently threatened to kill them. To protect their babies, the mothers many a night went apart, carrying their children sufficiently far away to prevent their cries being heard by the unnatural fathers. But the long-feared threat was at last carried out. [[12F]]

It is a strange sequence of events that on this same camp ground and almost immediately after the Great Revival, one of the Harpes killed his own child in the presence of its mother. A large maple tree still marks the spot near which this deed was enacted.

The details of this murder as given today by tradition are practically the same as those published by T. Marshall Smith: “Big Harpe snatched it—Susan’s infant, about nine months old—from its mother’s arms, slung it by the heels against a large tree by the path-side, and literally bursting its head into a dozen pieces, threw it from him as far as his great strength enabled him, into the woods.” This terrible tragedy is briefly referred to by Hall and Breazeale, both of whom state that Big Harpe, just before his death, declared he regretted none of the many murders he had committed except “the killing of his own child.”

The traditions of today and the three early writers just referred to are probably wrong as to the kinship that existed between the murdered child and its murderer. Draper, in his sketch of the Harpes, gives a more flexible statement: “Tradition says they killed one of their own children.” They had only three children and all of them were born in the Danville jail. Big Harpe’s boy, born to Betsey, and his girl, born to Susan, lived many years, as is shown later. The child that was so cruelly murdered by Big Harpe could have been no other than the daughter of Sally, who had married Little Harpe. So, in all probability, if Big Harpe committed the crime, his brother’s child was the victim.

The Harpes—Big Harpe’s Ride to Death

Rumor had it that the Harpes had left the neighborhood of Russellville, going south, and were probably making their way to west Tennessee. In the meantime, however, two small families had wandered into Henderson County, Kentucky, and were living in a rented cabin on a small farm on Canoe Creek, some eight miles south of Red Banks or Henderson. About twenty miles southwest of this point, near the headwaters of Highland Creek, were Robertson’s Lick and, west of it, Highland Lick. A few miles east of these, near the present town of Sebree, was Knob Lick.

The Highland Lick road and a few trails led to these salt licks, and, because of these roads and the salt wells with their “salt works,” many pioneers considered the section a very desirable one in which to live. Settlers were constantly coming for a bushel or two of salt and then returning home. The coming and going of people therefore attracted less attention along the Highland Lick road and its by-paths than in most other sections. And since only a few months before about fifteen outlaws had been killed in Henderson County, and all the others had been driven out [[124]] there was little likelihood of undesirable persons appearing on the scene. Principally for this reason, the two small families of recent arrivals on Canoe Creek attracted no particular attention, and least of all were they suspected of being notorious criminals. A good description of the Harpes was in wide circulation, and through General Hopkins they became especially well known in the lower Green River country. The return of the Harpes seemed as improbable as a second bolt of lightning in the same spot.

John Slover lived about a mile from the cabin rented by the new arrivals, but had seen them only once or twice and then from a distance. Slover’s career as an Indian fighter in eastern Kentucky was well known to his friends and acquaintances and was often the subject of discussion at fireside talks. In fact, his escape from Indian captivity was so singular and romantic that John A. McClung devoted a whole chapter to it when, in 1832, he published his Sketches of Western Adventure.

One day Slover was hunting near Robertson’s Lick, writes Draper in his “Sketch of the Harpes,” and, after killing a bear in the woods, returned to a path leading homeward. While leisurely riding along he heard the snap of a gun that failed to fire. Quickly turning in the direction of the sound he recognized his two new neighbors, well armed and wilder looking than Indians in battle. Comprehending the great danger of an encounter with two fierce men apparently prepared for murder, the experienced Indian fighter put spurs to his horse and escaped. Slover reported this experience to some of his friends and ventured the opinion that the two men were the Harpes. None doubted that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to shoot him but, on the other hand, none agreed with him that the Harpes had returned and were loitering around the licks.

A day or two later a man named Trowbridge left Robertson’s Lick to carry some salt to a farm on the Ohio near the mouth of Highland Creek. Trowbridge never returned, and his disappearance remained a mystery until a few months later when one of the Harpe women made known the facts. Trowbridge was killed by the Harpes about eight miles above the mouth of Highland Creek and his body sunk in the stream.

When General Hopkins received a report of Slover’s narrow escape, although doubting the presence of the Harpes, he detailed a number of men to watch the place on Canoe Creek. While loitering around their cabin the Harpes evidently not only wore clothes different from those in which they were seen by Slover, but also managed to change their general appearance to such an extent that Slover, inspecting them from a distance, did not recognize the two men as the same who had attempted to shoot him. The women were nowhere seen by the spies, for, as learned later, they were waiting for the Harpes to meet them at some designated place and time. The guards, after watching the house about a week without results, quietly returned to their homes, not realizing that the two suspected men were aware of their movements.

The next day the Harpes started toward the hiding place of their women and children. They traveled south about fifteen miles to the home of James Tompkins on Deer Creek, not far from what was then known as Steuben’s Lick, near which place, according to one tradition, General Steuben of Revolutionary fame was wounded, some fifteen years before, by an Indian. They rode good horses. Both were fairly well dressed and, upon meeting Tompkins, represented themselves as Methodist preachers. Their equipment aroused no suspicion, for the country was almost an unbroken wilderness and preachers as well as most other pioneers, were often seen traveling well armed. Tompkins invited them to supper, and Big Harpe, to ward off suspicion, said a long grace at table. In the course of their conversation one of the Harpes asked their host about his supply of venison. Tompkins, convinced that he was dealing with men from whom he had nothing to fear, admitted to shooting no deer lately for the simple reason that his powder was exhausted and had been for some time. Big Harpe, with affected generosity, poured a teacupful from his powder horn and presented it to Tompkins. That same powder, as we shall see, later performed a most singular service. [[28]] Bidding their host a farewell, ministerial in its pretense, the two desperadoes, pretending to have an engagement some miles south, took the trail in that direction.

That same evening, however, they made their appearance on the farm of Squire Silas McBee, one-half mile northwest of Tompkins’ place. Squire McBee was a justice of the peace and had been active in fighting outlaws. The murderers were, therefore, very much disposed to butcher him. It was early in the evening and the moon was shining brightly when they approached his house. The Squire kept a half dozen dogs for bear and deer hunting and, hearing an uproar among them, the McBees went to the door to investigate the cause. They saw the pack fiercely attacking two men, but, suspecting that the intruders might be of an unwelcome character, made no effort to restrain the hounds. After a fierce fight with the dogs, the Harpes withdrew.

Foiled in their attempt at Squire McBee’s, they proceeded about four miles northwest and late that night reached the house of Moses Stegall—about five miles east of what later became the town of Dixon. Stegall (also spelled Steigal, and various other ways) was absent, but his wife and their only child, a boy of four months, were at home and had, only a few hours before, admitted Major William Love, a surveyor, who had come to see Stegall on business. Mrs. Stegall, expressing an opinion that her husband would return that night, invited him to remain. He climbed to the loft above on a ladder on the outside of the house and was in bed when the new arrivals entered the cabin. [[57]] Stegall at one time lived in Knox County, Tennessee, [[21]] and evidently was acquainted with the Harpes, for Mrs. Stegall knew them but had received instructions from the Harpes never to address them by their real names in the presence of a third person. [[12E]] Major Love came down and met the two men, little suspecting who they were. In the conversation that followed the murderers themselves inquired about the Harpes and, among other things, stated that, according to rumor, the two outlaws were then prowling around in the neighborhood. [[27]]

Mrs. Stegall, having only the one spare bed in the loft, was obliged to assign it to the three men. After Major Love had fallen asleep one of the Harpes took an axe which he always carried in his belt and, with a single blow, dashed out the brains of the sleeping man. The two villains then went down to Mrs. Stegall’s room. She, knowing nothing to the contrary, presumed Major Love was still asleep. While reprimanding her for assigning them a bed with a man whose snoring kept them awake, they proceeded to murder her and her baby. After gathering some bedding and clothing, among which was Major Love’s hat, and leaving the three bodies in the house, they set it afire. [[27]] It was soon a smoking ruin.[11]

Such, briefly, is the account of the killing of Mrs. Stegall as given by all writers who describe this tragedy and as still told in western Kentucky by those who are familiar with local traditions. Breazeale, however, published some details which are very characteristic of the inhumanity of the Harpes, but which are not woven into any of the other versions. They are probably omitted more for the reason that the accounts are sufficiently gruesome without them than because of the possibility that such brutality might be questioned.

This version has it that on the morning the two Harpes burnt Stegall’s house, they arose and asked Mrs. Stegall to prepare breakfast for them. She consented to do so, explaining that since her child was not well and she had no one to nurse it the meal would necessarily be somewhat long in preparation. The men then suggested that she place the baby in the cradle and let them rock it. This she did. “After Mrs. Stegall had prepared their breakfast and the ruthless and savage murderers had partaken of her hospitality, she went to the cradle to see if the child was asleep, expressing some astonishment (as Micajah Harpe acknowledged when he was afterward taken) that her child should remain quiet for so great a length of time.... She beheld her tender, harmless, and helpless infant lying breathless, with its throat cut from ear to ear.... But the relentless monsters stayed not their bloody hands for the tears and heart-broken wailings of a bereaved mother. They instantly dispatched her, with the same instrument (a butcher knife) with which they had cut the throat of the child; then set fire to the house and fled.” [[21]]

Before leaving the Stegall farm they stole Major Love’s horse and one belonging to Stegall. They concealed themselves along the road that ran between Stegall’s and McBee’s, reasoning that if the Squire saw the light of the burning house, he would hasten there in the morning over this road and thus easily become their victim. While lying in wait for McBee, the outlaws halted two men named Hudgens and Gilmore, who were returning from Robertson’s Lick with packs of salt. The Harpes accused them of murdering the Stegall family and burning the house. The charge was denied, but when the two prisoners were told they must appear before Squire McBee to prove their innocence, they willingly submitted to arrest. While marching them along, Big Harpe purposely dropped behind and shot Gilmore through the head, killing him instantly. Hudgens, seeing this, ran away, hoping to escape, but was overtaken by Little Harpe, who snatched from him his gun and with it beat out his brains. [[12L]]

The murderers then resumed their hiding place, watching for the approach of the expected McBee. In the meantime, John Pyles and four other men from Christian County, returning from Robertson’s Lick, found the Stegall house a smouldering ruin, with not a human being in sight. Surroundings indicating that the disaster was still unknown in the neighborhood, they proceeded to McBee to notify him of their discovery. They were unmolested by the Harpes, who doubtless felt confident that the men would later return over the same road with McBee and thus give them the hoped for chance to shoot the justice of the peace from ambush.

McBee knew nothing of the fire until John Pyles reported it. He immediately rode to the home of William Grissom (or Grisson) who lived about a mile north of Stegall’s. It so happened that he took a short trail instead of the main road and thus providentially escaped the Harpes. He and Grissom, armed and well mounted, accompanied by Grissom’s family, rode to the Stegall home. They not only found the house burned to the ground, as described by John Pyles, but also discovered in the ashes the half-burned remains of Mrs. Stegall and Major Love. They then proceeded to McBee’s house, fortunately taking the same short cut over which the Squire had ridden in the morning. They had scarcely dismounted when Moses Stegall rode up. Then, for the first time, Stegall heard of what had happened to his family since he left home. The necessity of organizing a pursuing party had already been agreed upon and Stegall was sent to Robertson’s Lick for volunteers. [[12M]]

That same afternoon or night the Harpes and their women and two children, with all their goods and horses, began their flight. The next morning Stegall returned with John Leiper, Matthew Christian, and Neville Lindsey. These four, with Silas McBee, William Grissom, and James Tompkins, constituted a party of seven daring backwoodsmen, who were prepared to pursue and capture the Harpes, regardless of what danger and hardship the effort might involve.

Then began the chase after the Harpes—a chase made so cold and dramatic by its results, that for more than a century every minute detail of it has been sought by historians and by all who are curious about those full moments when life and death look each other in the eye with the event hanging on the balance of an instant. Various have been the accounts printed, nearly all agreeing in the main features but differing in those small details, the rendering of which seems to excite as it satisfies the curiosity of the mind. The most accurate account of this chase of death was published in September, 1842, in The Western Literary and Historical Magazine. It was prepared by the distinguished historical collector and author, Lyman C. Draper, who rendered invaluable service to western annals by gathering and preserving more data pertaining to the early history of the Middle West than any other man of his generation. His “Sketch of the Harpes” was written, as he is careful to explain, after a long conversation with Squire Silas McBee himself. After its publication the narrative was submitted for correction to Squire McBee, who made but four almost immaterial changes, all of which are noted in the account to follow.

It is well at the outset to point out that Silas McBee was a man of education and wide experience, more competent than any of the others engaged in this whirlwind chase to observe and give an account of all that occurred. He was born in 1765, fought as a youth at King’s Mountain, as he had in other Revolutionary battles and Indian wars. He was a brave soldier, an enthusiastic hunter, and an ideal pioneer of public spirit and character. In Alabama he served as a member of its first legislature. After living in western Kentucky, where for many years he did much for the general good, he removed to Mississippi and died there in 1845 at the age of eighty. [[41]] One of his daughters was the wife of Governor T. M. Tucker, of Mississippi, and another the wife of United States Senator Thomas H. Williams, of the same state.

Here is the McBee narrative of that famous chase:

“Mounted, and equipped, and provisioned for a few days, the little troop started about noon on their expedition against the Harpes, leaving their women and a faithful old negro servant with a few guns, to defend the temporarily fortified domicil at McBee’s. The trail of the Harpes was soon struck south of the road leading to the Lick; and after pursuing it a few miles, a spot was reached where the outlaws had evidently dispersed a large drove of buffaloes, with the design, doubtless, of so tramping down and tangling the wild grass and shrubbery as to render it difficult, if not impossible, to discover their course of flight. The pursuing party understood the stratagem, and though a little puzzled at first, they soon regained the trail, which, however, forked off at a little distance—the party dividing, followed each for a mile or two when the elliptical forks again united. After this they had no difficulty in keeping the path. At nightfall they halted and camped on the bottom of the western shore of Pond River, a considerable tributary of Green River. Their simple repast despatched, and horses secured, they retired to rest—the earth their bed, a wallet their pillow, and their only covering the broad canopy of heaven. That night they slept with an eye half open, but nothing occurred, save a smart dash of rain, to require particular notice.

“Early the following morning the pursuit was resumed, fording Pond River with ease, and riding on rapidly till an hour after sun up, when a couple of dead dogs were found in the trail, recognized as having belonged to the unfortunate Hutchins and Gillmore whom the Harpes had so wantonly murdered. From the fact that the bodies were not swollen in such hot August weather, it was inferred that the dogs had not long been killed, and that the fugitives could not be far ahead. They had probably killed the dogs to prevent their barking, and thus the better to enable them to make good their escape. It was now proposed by Squire McBee, in order to advance with the least noise, that four of the most expert footmen should dismount and push on as rapidly as due regard to caution would permit, leaving the horses for the remaining three to lead along more leisurely, yet keeping within hailing distance in case of need. Leiper, Steigal, Christian, and Lindsay, accordingly went ahead on foot, while McBee, Grissom, and Tompkins followed with the horses in charge. The pursuit continued in this manner for a mile or so, when, not finding the outlaws, the footmen again mounted their horses, and all went on together. But a short time elapsed before Squire McBee discovered the ruffians on a distant hill-side, a strip of low land intervening—both on foot with guns in hand, Big Harpe having a horse by his side, and both holding a parley with a person on horseback [corrected by Draper to afoot] whom they had apparently just met. McBee exclaimed ‘there they are,’ pointing towards them, and at the same time putting spurs to his horse dashed over the low ground and made for the spot. Big Harpe instantly mounted and darted off in one direction, and Little Harpe on foot in another, while the other individual rode [corrected by Draper to ran] rapidly towards McBee, and when within sixty or eighty yards suddenly dismounted [Draper eliminated ‘dismounted’] and betook himself to a tree. Seeing this bellicose demonstration on the part of an armed man, McBee in the excitement of the moment, drew up his gun, loaded with two balls, and ‘blazed away’ at that part of the body exposed to view, both bullets taking effect, one passing through the right thigh, and the other the right arm. At this moment Steigal recognised the wounded man as a settler living up Pond River some two or three miles; and perceiving some of the rest of the party in the act of levelling their pieces, Steigal exclaimed ‘don’t shoot, it’s George Smith!’ The unfortunate man, who knew Squire McBee, now calling him by name apologised for his singular conduct by saying, that he was nearly bereft of his senses, expecting every moment that the Harpes would kill him, and when he treed he had not recovered from his fright and was totally unfitted to perceive the folly and madness of the act. Little Harpe, he said, had met him with his gun in one hand, and a kettle in the other, going after water; and made enquiries about the settlements, speaking in an elevated tone, evidently that his brother might hear from the camp, not more than eighty rods distant, and come to his aid—such at least was the effect, intentional or not, for Big Harpe rode up and dismounted, and had been there but a few moments when McBee and his party unexpectedly made their appearance. Smith desired Squire McBee to assist him home, which with pleasure he consented to do after the Harpes were secured. He redeemed his promise, and in time Smith recovered both from his fright and his wounds [corrected by Draper to read: ‘Smith hobbled home by himself and in due time etc.’].

“After they broke and ran, the outlaws were instantly out of sight. A little search enabled the pursuers to discover the camp, which proved to be a natural room perhaps fifteen feet square, under a shelving rock projecting from the cliff of a ridge facing the south, with a large rock directly in front, leaving but a narrow entrance—affording altogether a very secluded and safe retreat, susceptible of easy defence. The pursuing party were rather cautious in approaching the camp, but Little Harpe’s woman alone remained. When questioned about the Harpes, she frankly said that Big Harpe had just been there, mounted each of his women on a good horse, and darted off in great haste. She was asked to point out the direction they had taken, which she readily did—the men, however, in their hurry, overlooked the trail and returned to the camp. Squire McBee, thinking she had purposely deceived them to gain time for Big Harpe and his women, raised his gun and threatened to kill her instantly if she did not give the correct information; upon which she went and pointed it out precisely as she had described it. After perhaps half an hour’s delay in finding the camp and parleying with the woman, the pursuers again proceeded with all possible haste, bent on the destruction of Big Harpe, and fully determined that nothing should divert them from their purpose.

“Squire McBee was left to bring on the prisoner, whom he mounted on one of the outlaw’s horses, and, though thus encumbered, he kept nearly up with the party. When about two miles from the camp, Big Harpe was again discovered on a ridge a short distance ahead, and some of the party halloed to him to stop, upon which he abandoned his women to their fate, and dashed on alone—Leiper, in the meantime, making an ineffectual shot at the fugitive. Tompkins and Lindsey were left in charge of the two captured women, while Leiper, Christian, Grisson, and Steigal renewed the chase with increased animation. Leiper not being able to draw his ramrod, owing to its swollen condition from the rain of the preceding night, had exchanged guns with Tompkins. The fleeing outlaw was closely pressed, Christian, Steigal, and Grisson each giving him a shot in the pursuit—Christian’s alone taking effect, wounding him in the leg. Harpe, discovering that Leiper was considerably in advance of the others, and supposing his gun empty, concluded to take advantage, as he thought, of the circumstance, and get a fair shot at his dangerous adversary. He accordingly stopped his horse, and while renewing his priming, Leiper took unerring aim, and fired—and the same powder which the outlaws had a few days previously given Tompkins, now sped the ball that mortally wounded Big Harpe. Though badly shot through the spine of his back, the wounded ruffian, determined to sell his life as dearly as possible, levelled his gun at Leiper; but even that deserted him in his hour of need—it snapped! and he threw it away in disgust. As Leiper and Christian were rapidly advancing upon him, Steigal and Grisson having lagged far behind, Harpe drew a large tomahawk and brandished it furiously to keep off his pursuers, at the same time urging on his jaded horse as well as he could. Leiper and Christian kept close at hand, repeatedly calling upon him to surrender, when he would again brandish his tomahawk in savage defiance. He finally agreed to surrender himself if they would stop their horses; accordingly they all reined up, Leiper and Christian dismounted and made some demonstrations towards loading; perceiving which, Harpe suddenly dashed off. Leiper’s horse, which had been standing by his side, though not held by him, now took fright and darted off after Harpe’s horse. Seeing the accident, Christian instantly mounted his steed and quickly overtook the runaway horse, returned him to Leiper, and both without loading renewed the pursuit. They easily followed the trail through a small canebrake of thick growth, and just as the fugitive was emerging from it they overhauled him, not more than half a mile distant from where he had taken French leave. His horse was walking quite leisurely, and Harpe’s wonted daring and bravery seemed to have forsaken him; and, faint from the loss of blood, he had either lost his tomahawk or thrown it away. They rode up and pulled him from his horse without resistance.

“Just at this moment Squire McBee came up with his prisoner in charge; and Steigal and Grisson soon after joined the party. The dying outlaw, as he lay stretched upon the ground, begged for water, and Leiper took a shoe from one of Harpe’s feet, and with it procured some for him near by. McBee now told him that he was already dying, but they should hasten his death; time, however, would be given him for prayer and preparation for another world—to which he made no reply, and appeared quite unconcerned. When asked if he had not money concealed, he replied that he had secreted a pair of saddle bags full in the woods on an eastern branch of Pond River, some twenty miles from its mouth. From his description of the branch, and their knowledge of the country, they concluded that there was no such water-course, and gave little or no heed to his story; but a report, however, has gained some currency—for the truth of which we cannot vouch, that a considerable sum of specie has been found, within a few years, near the head waters of Pond River.

“Steigal, after reminding Harpe how unfeelingly he had murdered his wife and only child, drew a knife, and exhibiting it to him, said in plain terms that he intended to cut his head off with that! ‘I am,’ said the dying outlaw faintly, ‘but a young man, but young as I am I feel the death-damp already upon my brow; and before I die I could wish that old Baldwin might be brought here, as he is the man who instigated me to the commission of all my crimes.’ This Baldwin, a very suspicious character, lived at Green Tree Grove, in the then adjoining county of Livingstone, now called Caldwell; and though subsequently tried, he was acquitted, nothing positive being proven against him. When they had somewhat recovered from the fatigue of the chase, after perhaps an hour’s delay—during which Harpe lay on the ground upon his right side, unable from weakness to raise himself, and rapidly ebbing his life away—Steigal stepped forward and pointed the muzzle of his gun at the head of the expiring outlaw, who conscious of the intention, and desirous at least of procrastinating it dodged his head to and fro with an agility unexpected to the beholders, manifesting pretty plainly a strong disrelish ‘to shuffle off this mortal coil.’ Perceiving this, Steigal observed, ‘very well, I believe I will not upon reflection shoot him in the head, for I want to preserve that as a trophy;’ and thereupon shot him in the left side—and Harpe almost instantly expired without a struggle or a groan. Steigal, with the knife he had so menacingly exhibited to Harpe, now cut off the outlaw’s head. Squire McBee had with him a wallet in which he had brought his provisions and provender—in one end of this, Steigal placed the severed head, and some articles of corresponding weight in the other, and then slung it behind him across his horse, and all commenced their return. Thus died Big Harpe, long the terror of the west, and his decapitated body was left in the wilds of Muhlenberg county, as unsepulchred as his merited death was unwept and unmourned.

“After the party left the scene of decapitation they re-joined Tompkins and Lindsay, who had been left in charge of the two women of Big Harpe, and they all proceeded to the camp of the outlaws, which they gave a careful examination. Nothing of any value was discovered, save a dollar and a half in small change pieces. Ten horses in all were recovered and restored to their several owners. That noble animal which Big Harpe rode, and which had belonged to Major Love, was conveyed to his widow, but did not long survive that terrible ride.

“The head was conveyed to the cross-roads within half a mile of Robertson’s Lick, and there placed in the forks of a tree, where for many years it remained a revolting object of horror. To this day the place where that bloody trophy was deposited is known as Harpe’s Head, and the public road which passes by it from the Deer Creek settlement to the ‘Lick,’ is still called Harpe’s Head Road. In subsequent years a superstitious old lady of the neighborhood, some member of whose family was afflicted with fits, having been told that the human skull pulverized, would effect a certain cure, thus appropriated that of the memorable outlaw of the west.”

LEXINGTON, Sept. 10.

The two murderers by the name of Harps, who killed Mr. Langford last winter in the wilderness, and were arrested and broke the Danville goal, killed a family on Pond river, by the name of Staple on the 22d day of August, and burnt the house; a party of men pursued and overtook them and their women; the Harps parted. Micajah Harp, took two of the women off with him; the men pursued him, and in riding about 10 or 12 miles, caught him, having previously shot him. He confessed the killing of Mr. Stump on Big Barren; he also confessed of their killing 17 or 18 besides; they killed two men near Robertson’s Lick, the day before they burnt Staple’s house. They had with them eight horses and a considerable quantity of plunder, seven pair of saddle bags, &c. They cut off his head. The women were taken to the Red banks. The above took place on Pond river in the county of Muhlenburg.

Facsimile of News Item regarding Capture of Micajah Harpe

Dated Lexington, Kentucky, September 10, 1799, and published in the Carolina Gazette, Charleston, S. C., October 24, 1799

Thus ended the career of “one of the most brutal monsters of the human race.” And Little Harpe, having escaped the pursuers, resumed elsewhere, as we shall see later, his life of outlawry. The capture of Big Harpe is briefly described by Breazeale, Collins, Hall, and a few other historians, but none goes into details as does Draper in the sketch quoted. Each of these writers, however, presents some circumstance not mentioned by the others. Some writers say Big Harpe made a confession before he was killed; others are absolutely silent on that feature, neither affirming nor denying it. Local tradition, the current newspapers, and Breazeale are among those who state that Big Harpe made a confession. It is more than probable that he did. The Kentucky Gazette of September 5, 1799, prints a statement to the effect that he confessed to killing about twenty people. Colonel G. W. Sevier, about 1840, recalled the number as about thirty-one. [[12G]] The number of their victims noted in this sketch up to the death of Big Harpe is twenty-eight, exclusive of the Triswords of whom there were probably about ten.

The report that Big Harpe had been captured and beheaded and that Little Harpe had escaped spread rapidly throughout Kentucky and Tennessee, and was soon verified by the state press. Among the newspapers beyond the boundaries of these two states that announced this news was The Carolina Gazette, of Charleston, which, in its issue of October 24, 1799, published a paragraph on the subject, dated Lexington, Kentucky, September 10, which is here reproduced in facsimile.

History and local tradition have it that Big Harpe was killed in Muhlenberg County, two miles west of Unity Baptist Church [[110]] near what has since been known as Harpe’s Hill. An oak tree four feet in diameter, which until 1910 stood about a hundred yards from Pond River on the old Slab Road leading from Harpe’s Hill to “Free Henry” Ford, was always pointed out as the tree under which Big Harpe was beheaded and his headless corpse lay until it was devoured by wild animals. On the south slope of Harpe’s Hill, about a mile and a half east of Pond River and a few steps off the road leading to “Free Henry” Ford, is a large isolated rock known as Harpe’s “House.” It was at this so-called “rock house” that the Harpes were camping when overtaken by the pursuers. [[109]]

After Big Harpe had been disposed of and the women held as prisoners, the pursuers began their victorious march to Robertson’s Lick, a distance of some thirty-five miles, there to display the head and to warn Little Harpe and all other outlaws what to expect should they attempt any depredations. Draper, as we have already seen, states that before the men started on their return, Stegall placed the severed head in one end of a wallet and some articles of corresponding weight in the other end and then swung it across his horse. The same historian, in one of his note books, wrote: “Big Harpe’s wife was made to carry the head by the hair some distance; while slinging it along she kept muttering, ‘damn the head!’” [[12G]] Another account is that the men, knowing they would be obliged to camp out for the night and require more food than still remained, took some roasting ears from a field along the route and having no other means of carrying them, put them unhusked into the bag with Big Harpe’s head. Later, when the corn was taken out and prepared for supper, one of the men refused to eat “because it had been put into the bag with Harpe’s head.” [[21]]

The head was carried to the neighborhood where the two Harpes had committed their last crime. Authors vary somewhat in the details of just how this gruesome object was displayed as a warning to outlaws, but all agree that it was put up by the side of the highway (about three miles north of what later became the town of Dixon) near the forks of the road running south from Henderson, one branch of which extended to Marion and Eddyville and the other to Madisonville and Russellville, Kentucky. The old road became known as Harpe’s Head Road, and its successor, the Henderson and Madisonville Pike, still bears that name.[12]

The captors had traveled about thirty-five miles before they reached the spot decided upon as the most fitting place to display the head. Continuing their journey some twenty miles further they arrived in Henderson and there placed the three women in “the little log dungeon, then located on the river bank near the present bridge”—the railroad bridge erected in 1885. [[124]] About a week later they were taken to the court house for trial. The minute book of the Court of Quarter Sessions briefly shows, on pages 4 and 5, what disposition was made of them by that court, an exact copy of which is here given as extracted from the records in the curious courthouse jargon of that day:

“At a Court of Quarter Sessions called and held for the County of Henderson on Wednesday the 4th day of September, 1799, for the examination of Susanna Harpe, Sally Harpe, and Betsey Roberts, committed to the jail of this county for being parties in the murder of Mary Stegall, James Stegall an infant, and William Love at the house of Moses Stegall in this County and in burning his house and robbing and stealing the horses, goods and effects of the said Moses Stegall on the night of the 20th day of August last.

“Present Samuel Hopkins and Abraham Landers Esquires.

“The said prisoners were set to the bar in custody of the Sheriff of this County and being charged with the felony aforesaid denied the fact sundry witnesses were thereupon sworn and examined and the said prisoners heard in their defence by their att’e on consideration whereof it is the opinion of the Court that the said prisoners are guilty of the facts charged against them and that they ought to be tried for the same before the Judges of the District Court holden at Logan Courthouse on the first day of their next October Court, and it is therefore ordered that the said prisoners be remanded to the jail from whence they came there to remain until removed by due course of law.

“John Leiper, Nevil Lindsey, Matthew Christian, and Isham Sellers severally acknowledged themselves indebted to his Excellency James Garrard Esquire, Governor of this Commonwealth in the sum of fifty pounds each to be levied on their lands and tenements goods and chattels respectively and to our said Governor and his successors rendered in case they fail to appear as Witnesses, on behalf of the Commonwealth before the Judges of the District Court holden at Logan Courthouse on the first day of their next October Term, and then and there give evidence against Susannah Harpe, Sally Harpe, and Betsey Roberts charged with felony.

“(Signed) Sam Hopkins.”[13]

A search recently made for details regarding this examining or preliminary trial resulted in the finding of a bundle of papers labeled “1799,” in which were discovered four depositions pertaining to the arrest of the Harpe women. They were made September 4, by the four men who on that day were put under bond to appear at the trial in Russellville, to which place the case was ordered for trial. These old documents substantiate the statements made by Squire McBee to Lyman C. Draper who wove them, with other details, into his account of the capture of the Harpes. The depositions show that Moses Stegall arrived at Robertson’s Lick on August 22, 1799, to procure volunteers to join in the chase.

Matthew Christian in his testimony recites that immediately after Stegall came to Robertson’s Lick with the news of the murder he started for Stegall’s farm and became fully convinced that the report with all its terrible details was true. He then proceeded to Grissom’s house, which had been designated as a rallying point, preparatory to going to Squire McBee’s the following morning. Although it was not known that Grissom’s family had left home and gone to McBee’s to remain during the proposed pursuit, the men, nevertheless, met at this designated place “where they tarried all night.” Christian “found a paper fas’d to the door of Wm. Grayson’s [Grissom’s] house, signed by Silas Magby and directed to Moses Stegall in the following words: ‘Come to my house without delay,’ and a jacket hanging up at the said door supposed by the company to belong to Major William Love. That he from there went to Silas Magby’s in company with John Leiper, Nevil Lindsey, and Moses Stegall, that on their way to Magby’s he heard a gun go off which he supposed was fired by one of the prisoners who had committed the felony.” This note was apparently a forgery and shows that the Harpes had planned to kill Stegall; and since it is more than likely that the outlaws had already started on their flight, this attempt to waylay Stegall indicates that the Harpes must have been associated with some accomplice living in the neighborhood, with whom they prearranged this move.

Isom Sellers’ statement shows that on August 16, four days before the Stegall fire, the three Harpe women stopped at John Leiper’s house and inquired the way to Moses Stegall’s and that Sellers “being indebted to Susannah Harpe one dollar gave her an order upon Moses Stegall for the said sum which this deponent saith that Moses Stegall has informed him he has paid agreeable to the aforesaid order.” There is nothing to indicate the specific purpose of this statement; however, it is further evidence that Stegall was acquainted with the Harpes and he may have served as a spy or messenger for them.

Nevil Lindsey’s deposition gives a detail not mentioned in any printed sketch or oral tradition: “Three case-knives were stuck into the body of Mrs. Stegal, one of them was buried in so deep that the fire which consumed the house would not burn the handle.”

John Leiper asserts that when they “had rode about forty-five miles they came up with Sally Harpe standing on the ground and ... to show them the way they had gone went with them for that purpose, that after riding about a mile and a half they came up with Susanna Harpe, Betsey Roberts, and Micajah Harpe, they rode by the two women and followed Micajah Harpe for about four miles, when this deponent overtook and killed him.”

Christian’s deposition states that Big Harpe, before he died, “asked for water and that John Leiper went to Pond River and brought him some in a shoe.” The depositions of both Leiper and Christian end in practically the same words: “That the said Micajah Harpe a little while before he expired told this deponent that Susannah was his wife and that he wished she could come up and wished her to do better in the future and that the whole of them would do better in the future, escrowed as he was, and that he would acquaint her with one thing that was hid.”

Two days after their examining or preliminary trial, the three women and two infants were sent, by order of Judge Samuel Hopkins, to Russellville, Logan County, there to appear before the judges of the District Court, which court at that time embraced Henderson County. There is no history or tradition as to how the three women were conducted to “Logan Courthouse.” They probably were taken on horseback. The minutes of the next term of the court of Quarter Sessions held in Henderson contain a few items that throw some light on the expense of holding and then transferring the prisoners, the total being $281.78.

These entries indicate that the prisoners were accompanied by the sheriff and five guards and that the county attorney and county clerk took part in the second trial. The prisoners and their guard left Henderson September 6, and after traveling the ninety-five miles, the women were turned over to the sheriff to await their trial, September 28.[14]

Major William Stewart was sheriff of Logan County at the time. He more than once had chased the Harpes for many a mile, only to discover that he was going in the wrong direction and to become irritated by his failure. He was, notwithstanding his eccentricities, a just man and one on whom a person in need might depend, and the three women, realizing this, must have felt encouraged, not only by the prospect of receiving justice, but also of having mercy shown them. Draper, in his notes on information supplied by George Herndon, a Revolutionary soldier, who long lived in Logan County, writes: “The women were, of course, in his charge, and lodged in the old log jail, becoming dirty and lousy, Major Stewart, feeling for their miserable situation, agreed to let them enjoy the liberty, provided they promised not to attempt to escape and thus make him liable, for he did the act on his individual responsibility. They were rejoiced at the offer and he went around the little town and collected some necessary articles of clothing for them, had them and their children cleaned up, placed them in the courthouse and got a couple of spinning wheels and set them to spinning.” [[12F]]

Smith says the murders committed by the Harpes in this section of Kentucky were too fresh in the minds of the people living in and near Russellville and the suspicion that the women had been accomplices in their crimes was too strong to fail to arouse a hatred for the three women. When threats were made to tear down the log jail and lynch the prisoners, the sheriff secretly conveyed them into the country, where they remained until brought back for trial.

This statement probably is not true. It may have originated from the fact that Stegall and some of his friends rode to Russellville for the purpose of killing the women should they be acquitted. Discovering Stegall’s motive, Stewart put the Harpe women back in jail, pretending “it would never do to turn such characters loose upon society,” but the next night he hid them in a cave about five miles from town and thus shielded them from the revenge-seeking Stegall who, a few days later, returned home. [[28]]

An examination of the minute book of the old District Court preserved in Russellville, shows that on Monday, October 28, 1799, a grand jury having been empaneled, “made the following presentment: Commonwealth against Susanna Harpe, Sally Harpe, and Betsey Roberts, a true bill.” A District Court was presided over by a judge and two associate judges, and Judges Samuel McDowell and John Allen being absent, the women, rather than delay the trial, agreed to be tried before the one who was present, namely, Judge James G. Hunter. Judge Felix Grundy appeared in behalf of the women, and no one, except the prosecuting officer, against them. Each prisoner was tried by a different jury, the three trials taking place on October 29th and 30th. “Susanna Harpe, late of the County of Henderson and parish of Kentucky, spinster, who stands indicted of felony was led to the bar in the custody of the public jailor and pleads not guilty to the Indictment, and for her trial hath put herself upon God and her Country and the Attorney General in behalf of the Commonwealth, likewise whereupon came a jury, to-wit: [twelve men are named] who being tried ... and having heard the evidence, upon their oaths do say that the Susanna Harpe is not guilty of the murder aforesaid.”