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.