These battles that the Harpes supposedly participated in resulted in major Patriot victories.
They also appeared in the same supporting role, at the Battle of King's Mountain, October 7, 1780, under British commander Major Patrick Ferguson. Frank Wood claimed to have seen the Harpe brothers, serving "loosely" as Tory militia, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's British Legion, at the Battles of Blackstocks, November 20, 1780, and Cowpens, January 17, 1781. In an interview Smith had with the Patriot soldier, Frank Wood, who was the son of Captain James Wood revealed that he was the older brother of Susan Wood Harpe, the later kidnapped wife of Micajah "Big" Harpe. These gangs took advantage of the war by raping, stealing, and murdering, and burning and destroying the property, especially farms, of patriot colonists. According to Smith, from an eyewitness account from Captain James Wood, they joined a Tory rape gang in North Carolina and took part in the kidnapping of three teenage girls, with a fourth girl being rescued by Captain Wood. Around April or May, 1775, the young Harper cousins left North Carolina and went to Virginia to find overseer jobs on a slave plantation.Īt the outbreak of the American Revolution, little is known of the Harpes' whereabouts. The anti-British Crown neighbors of the Harpers were known as Whigs, Rebels, and Patriots. The Harper patriarchs were loyal to the British Crown and were known as Royalists, Kings Men, Loyalists, and Tories and may also, have been regulators involved in the North Carolina Regulator War. Their fathers were brothers, John and William Harper, who settled Orange County, North Carolina between 17. One of his stories was that the Harpe brothers were actually cousins, William and Joshua Harper, who would sometime later take the alias Harpe, emigrated, in 1759 or 1760, at a young age, from Scotland. Smith stated he had heard stories from his grandfather, older pioneers, and those who had interviewed two of the Harpe wives. Marshall Smith 1855 book, Legends of the War of Independence, and of the Earlier Settlements in the West, that the Harpes were much older than most mainstream historians have acknowledged. 23, 1998, in the southern Illinois newspaper, American Weekend, through thorough research, he cited the T. Little Harpe married Sally Rice, daughter of a Baptist minister.ĭisputed claims of early lives and involvement in Revolutionary War and Indian Wars Big Harpe is known to have had two wives, sisters Susan and Betsey Roberts. Their father or their uncles, were allegedly of Tory allegiance, who fought on the British side during the Revolutionary War. The Harpes are said to have been brothers (though some sources say cousins), born in Orange County, North Carolina to Scottish parents. Their crimes appear to have been motivated more by blood lust than financial gain and many historians have called them the America's first true "serial killers".
Micajah "Big" Harpe (1768? To August 1799) and Wiley "Little" Harpe (1770? To February 8, 1804), pronounced (mickey) and (Why-lee), were murderers, highwaymen, and river pirates, who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the late 18th century. They may have been left on their own at a very young age, turned out from their homestead and into the forest and caves where they lived most of their lives. One account says the Harpes were sons of a Revolutionary War soldier and a Negro slave.
First of all, the Harpes might not have really been brothers, but first cousins instead who emigrated (or whose parents did) from Scotland.
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