The Blue Cloak

by Shannon McNear

  They settled eventually in Elizabethtown, where Ben set up practice as a barrister and rose quickly as a leader in the local militia and other business.

  Wiley Harpe did not, to their knowledge, ever return to Kentucky or Tennessee. In the meantime, the Rices moved away from Knox County, and Rachel had heard no word since of Sally’s welfare. She couldn’t blame her old friend for wanting a quiet life, away from the public eye, though folk had been kind enough, at least as far as Rachel knew, after Sally returned home. But Sally’s admission of envy of Rachel’s good fortune in Ben still stung.

  To think she’d had the audacity herself to envy what she thought was a good friend’s happiness, at one time. Not trusting that God could similarly bless her, or even exceed her hopes.

  Not understanding that even something that appeared to be a good thing could go suddenly, horribly awry.

  A familiar pang of fear and doubt gripped her heart, and once more she looked up at Ben. Even after nearly five years, she still caught herself wondering whether things would yet similarly go awry….

  A somber expression etched his features as well, and he gazed past her as if his thoughts were completely elsewhere. What was he remembering? Did he grapple with questions similar to her own?

  “Ben?”

  He stirred, inhaling deeply, eyes no longer distant, but searching hers. She put out a hand, and he took it, drawing her back to her feet and into his embrace.

  The babe in her belly kicked against the sudden pressure. They shared a chuckle, then Ben tucked her closer and sighed. “After all these years … justice is finally served for Thomas and the others. Finally.”

  “And God has answered us all,” she murmured.

  Historical Note

  The internet is a repository of many things strange and wonderful, but most of the two dozen or so articles out there featuring the Harpes, plus a few books, draw from the 1924 work The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock by Otto A. Rothert, who dug deeply into newspaper articles and original court records. He in turn often cites the works of historian Lyman Draper, who had much of the story from the lips of men who participated in the hunt. In cases where their testimony, sometimes given decades later, conflicts with court depositions, I took the word of the deposition as more accurate. I also thankfully have access to genealogical records, where Rothert and other early writers did not, and feel on the basis of those, a few of his theories are disproved.

  On the true identity of the Harpes: Historians disagree on whether Micajah and Wiley were indeed brothers or only cousins. Early records sketchily document two brothers by the names of James and William Harper who immigrated from Scotland to the American colonies in the 1760s. The younger was killed during the Revolution (possibly even at Kings Mountain). Some speculate that Micajah was son of the elder brother—possibly of an African mother, by descriptions of his personal appearance—and Wiley son of the younger, or that both were sons of one father but different mothers. Either way, it’s my opinion that the story of the Harpes begins here, with the fathers, who sided firmly with the British, and whose sons William and Joshua were definitely “wild Tory boys.”

  Many historians paint all Tories as cowardly and murderous, but T. Marshall Smith, in his work Legends of the War of Independence makes a very important distinction between those who chose loyalty to the Crown out of principle (in this case, the fathers of the Harpes, being proper Scottish Covenanters) and those who saw it as an opportunity for avarice. (I’d argue that some chose rebellion against the Crown for similar reasons, but that’s another novel for another time.) He’s also the only source for the early years of the Harpes, accounts of which he claims to have gotten directly from the lips of Betsey and Susan. Being written in 1855, however, the whole thing reads more like a Victorian novel than actual history, so I’m not sure how much weight to give his work. Where possible, I tried to cross-check persons and dates through Ancestry.com and Find-A-Grave (oh so helpful to have actual census records and gravestones to verify names and ages and locations), but I had trouble pinning down solid evidence for parents’ names or ages for either the Harpes, or Susan and Betsey. I also read his account of the kidnapping of both girls well after writing Susan’s account in my story, which I’d built out of bare facts and speculation. Genealogical records say that Micajah was born in 1768, and Wiley in 1770, which would put the two of them at twelve and ten during the Battle of Kings Mountain, where Micajah’s father was a likely participant and the boys possible witnesses, if not participants as well. This seems harsh and implausible to our modern minds but—from what I know of history, and even modern-day warfare on other continents—is still extremely possible. If the boys were participants in that particular battle at that age, it could certainly explain how their thirst for bloodshed found its roots.

  The probable ages for Susan and Betsey are also much in question, as well as what year they were stolen from their homes. If the kidnappings took place near the close of the war, then they very well could have been only thirteen and eleven, as Susan states—and certainly no more than fifteen to seventeen, if it happened later. Were there witnesses to the Harpes traveling the wilderness, the girls in tow, tied to their saddles, or was that a melodramatic construct of Smith? One cannot be certain. But I used the names Smith supplies, if not the ages, for Susan’s and Betsey’s true identities.

  Solid genealogical records on the family of Sally Rice I did find, the best in my opinion on Geni.com. Also, with the murdered Langford being variously reported as Thomas, Stephen, and John, I was determined to track down his family as well, and in the process discovered a well-established Virginia lineage where the name Benjamin proliferated—and this after I’d written my proposal and chosen that name for my fictional hero. So, my Ben becomes the orphan cousin of a fictional branch of the real-life Langfords of Pitt County (similar to what I did with the Bledsoes in Defending Truth), but other named family members are verified historical figures, with actual positions and histories as I found them: “Pitt Ben,” the sheriff of Pitt County; Stephen, who indeed helped found the town of Mount Vernon, Kentucky—after having his lands confiscated at the end of the Revolution as a penalty for choosing loyalty to the Crown; Mary Todd, widow of Richard Todd and sister-in-law to Judge Thomas Todd, who served in some respect during at least the initial hearing and trial for the murder of Thomas Langford; and a probable connection to Jane, the daughter-in-law of John Farris and assistant keeper of the tavern where Thomas was last seen alive. (Some sources state she was Jenny Langford, given name Mary Jane, but her deposition as one of five witnesses for the hearing in Stanford and the trials in Danville was signed Jane Farris, so I went with that first name and not Jenny.) Many of the connections between the Langfords and the true identity of the Harpes’ murder victim were made in discussions during genealogical research, the most detailed of which I found at Sherlene’s G-LOG (https://sherlene.wordpress.com/), which chronicles some excellent and fascinating genealogical research by Sherlene Hall Bartholomew.

  If I’d had time, I would have loved to find out whether original court records for either set of trials still exist. As it was, I had to rely on others’ accounts of those, which in some cases included transcriptions. The events of Thomas Langford’s murder and others are as true to historical account as I could make them, with very few and minor alterations. Most of these events are covered in great detail either in Rothert’s work, The Outlaw Years by Robert M. Coates, The Harpes’ Last Rampage by E. Don Harpe (who interestingly claims relation), and America’s First Serial Killers by Wallace Edwards. Certain things emerge as “canon,” with a few variations, depending upon whom the later writers took as most trustworthy from the earlier ones. Some side research on the internet uncovered a surprising new source not referred to by the others: a letter written beginning in 1808 by a woman named Sarah McClendon, who lived within sight of the crossroads where Moses Stegall placed the head of Micajah Harpe, and who remembered the Harpes’ reign of terror quite vividly. Hers is the account
which includes an encounter between them and her husband, wherein Micajah asks for a replacement for his lamed horse; the description of the women (including the rhyming nicknames); and the incident regarding her young neighbors, Helen (or Grace) Levi and Silver May. Sarah McClendon herself was one of those neighbors who sat vigil over Helen to make sure she didn’t harm herself. Sadly, she also relates how the mother of “Dollbaby,” the little girl found killed and dismembered by the Harpes after wandering away to pick berries, succumbed to grief and drowned herself, laying yet another death at the Harpes’ feet.

  The connection between Rachel and Sally is, of course, fictional. Although Ben and Rachel are properly my story’s hero and heroine, Sally emerges as central—amid the spiritual warfare that almost certainly played into her eventual deliverance. When I first began researching and discovered that she was indeed the daughter of a Baptist preacher, my first thought was, How could that have happened? However we feel about it with our modern Christian sensibilities, it’s very much a fact of history that many couples were intimate before the actual wedding, as attested to by the vast numbers of genealogical records where the oldest child is born six to eight months after the wedding. I first noticed this phenomenon in the record of my husband’s family tree, which goes back to about 1850, but human nature is human nature, after all. After some study, I’ve concluded that premarital sex wasn’t necessarily approved of, publicly, but that it might have been considered “allowable” if the couple was engaged—or perhaps it was more a matter of, having been found out, the marriage was carried through more speedily than it otherwise might have been. And so that seemed the most likely scenario to me where Sally and Wiley were concerned.

  I was delighted to find a microfiche copy online of their marriage bond. Further investigation revealed that an H. L. White, who stood as witness for the marriage, was Hugh Lawson White, the son of James White, founder of Knoxville (which really was as wild and wooly in its early days as I describe—worse, really), and recently returned from law school in the East. Voilà, a handy connection for fictional Ben. I could find, however, very little documentation for details of what law school entailed, or for how the judicial system worked, especially on the frontier, so there’s much that I tried to keep vague. (If there are any glaring errors, I’d love to hear them because I might need the information for future stories!)

  An actual marriage bond existed as well for Micajah Harpe and Susanna Roberts, signed by one John Roberts—likely the “Old Man Roberts” that many writers and people of the day referred to. Most writers presume, because Susan and Betsey both took Roberts as their maiden names, that they were sisters, and Old Man Roberts their father, but—after much reading and consideration, and digging around on Ancestry.com and other sites, it’s my firm belief that he was actually the father of Micajah and that they all just took the name Roberts as an alias whenever they wanted to appear legit.

  Also, the existence of a living older son of Micajah and Susan is pure speculation on my part but could be accurate. An account exists by a preacher of the time of an encounter with “one of the tribe of Harpes” who attends church almost by accident and later becomes a Christian. The preacher refers to him as a younger brother of Micajah, but—what if he really was Micajah and Susan’s son? How cool would that be, after everything, for a child of theirs to become a trophy of heaven?

  And speaking of children and birth control—yes, it existed prior to modern times but mostly in the form of herbal abortifacients. There are a handful of tried-and-true “remedies” for “delayed menstruation” that have been in use since Roman times, but one in particular I ran across years ago in, I believe, one of the Foxfire books, where an Appalachian woman described having a jar full of seeds from a particular very common roadside weed, and how if she swallowed a spoonful of said seeds every day, she never conceived. But the moment she ran out … So I thought it very likely, if Sally and Wiley were married in June 1797 but neither she nor the other women had babies until early 1799—and then all in close succession—it was likely they were practicing this or a similar form of birth control.

  So much was guesswork, in between events verified by newspapers of the day and court documents. For instance, the famous (or is that infamous?) river pirate, Samuel Mason, once a Revolutionary War hero, was possibly nowhere near Cave-in-Rock at the time the Harpes landed there, but it’s known that Wiley later associated with him, under the assumed name John Setton (or Sutton). Tracking the Harpes for story purposes often proved difficult. So did deciding on a particular spelling for names. I already mentioned the difficulty with verifying Thomas Langford’s first name—genealogical records are notoriously varied, and his family also goes by Lankford. Harpe itself is most commonly spelled Harp in contemporary writings, but I chose the “e” spelling for modern familiarity. Same goes for Micajah, which should be pronounced Mi-CAY-ah (and in one place is actually spelled Micayah) but during that time probably was pronounced closer to Mi-CAH-juh, which then led interestingly enough to the transliteration on his marriage record as McAjor (… what??). Wiley’s name is spelled “Willey Harp” on his marriage bond, written in Hugh Lawson White’s own hand, and suggests a different pronunciation for his name as well, but again I chose what fit modern legend, for familiarity.

  Other figures in the account with various spellings: Tiel/Thiel (I went with the phonetic), Leiper/Leeper/Luper (it’s Leiper in the 1810 Census though Ancestry.com says Leeper), McBee/Magby (it’s on his tombstone as McBee), and Stegall/Stigall/Steigal/ll (I had to just pick one, but that would be why there is Stigall’s Station early in the story, and then a different spelling for the man who actually ended Micajah’s life).

  The period abounded as well with certain first names. As a novelist, if I’d known I’d be writing this story, I’d have tried to choose different character names in earlier stories—Sarah or Sally, Susanna, Thomas, Elizabeth, even Micah—but perhaps my readers could take this as an example of unavoidable similarities of name in any era. (For instance, there were so many Benjamins in the Lang[k]-ford family tree, what was one more, albeit a fictional one?) Also, just as Sally is the common derivative of the formal name Sarah, several early derivatives exist for Elizabeth: Betsy, Bess, Liz, Lizzy, Eliza. I’ve used Bess and Lizzy in previous stories, and it seemed to me that the real-life Elizabeth Carrick, genteel daughter of the Presbyterian minister who started the first college in Tennessee, and eventual wife of Hugh Lawson White, should be none other than an Eliza, so that’s what I’ve called her.

  Yes, there were still herds of buffalo (really, bison) and elk in western Kentucky at this time, and flocks of the now-extinct Carolina parakeet, often referred to by settlers as parrots, all of which were actually native to the region.

  There were so many little things I learned about the Harpes while studying them that I couldn’t find context for explaining outright in the story. Such as, they had a liking for “good horses”—the term of the day for particularly fast or strong mounts—and it’s almost certain that they’d have been motivated to try to procure one like Ben’s Ivy, once they saw her in action. And much time is given to speculation over whether the women could have, or how they should have, tried harder to escape the Harpes. I would argue, again, that while Micajah still lived, such a thing was unlikely. Multiple accounts document the unholy influence surrounding the men—how sometimes even properly equipped search parties would encounter them in the wilderness then get spooked and run away. How much more would the women feel it impossible to cross them, and live? I feel that those who express incredulity at the women not being able to leave once they’d been in bondage have no real understanding of victim psychology. I didn’t have any trouble understanding the terrible hold Micajah and Wiley exerted on the women, even to the extent of them choosing to return to the men over such great distances and encumbered with little ones.

  So what became of them all, after?

  Susan Harpe lived out the rest of her days in Kentucky. It’s reported that L
ovey grew to be an eye-catching but temperamental young woman who followed the Butler family to Texas, and her fate from there is a mystery.

  Betsey Roberts (she kept her adopted name) also lived in Kentucky, where she met and married John Hufstutter then eventually moved to Illinois where they “raised a large family” and lived to a good old age. Her son Joseph Harpe, however, vanishes from historical record, except for it being reported that as a young adult he joined the army.

  Sally Rice Harpe remarried at least once and died possibly some forty years later in North Carolina in the company of her younger siblings. She was harder to track—and no wonder, if she was trying to keep a low profile to protect her family from further recrimination. It is documented that her father and mother eventually moved to northern Alabama and are buried there. One account, given by the very eccentric man who served as their jailer in Russellville, Kentucky, says she was seen crossing the Ohio in the company of her husband, father, and daughter, some fifteen or twenty years later, but I have a hard time crediting this as fact. Still, it could be, but the daughter would not have been hers by a Harpe.

  The head of Micajah Harpe did not, as legend suggests, get carried off by someone seeking to use it for occult purposes. Sarah McClendon writes in much detail how in the weeks following, Moses Stegall would return and shoot at the head he’d posted there, and eventually, when what was left of it fell into the road, made his mare tread back and forth across it. So—whatever fragments remained after that are likely buried under layers of time.

  Wiley Harpe did indeed make his escape, apparently via the Ohio River, downstream to the Mississippi, where he became known as John Setton (or Sutton) and fabricated a whole new personal history for himself. (Including the claim that he’d immigrated from Ireland, to cover, I presume, for his strong Scots/Irish accent.) There is evidence that he did actually return to Tennessee, so it’s anybody’s guess whether he might have tried to reclaim Sally—although I expect if she had her family to back her up, his influence would have proven less compelling without Micajah also present. It seems likely, however, that he was responsible for the seduction and murder of another young woman from central Tennessee, while claiming she fell from her horse and was dragged to her death.