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.