The Harpe Brothers: The First Serial Killers in American History

The United States has had more serial killers than any other nation in modern history. US law enforcement communities even found it necessary to define the term, back in the 1960s. Before then the very idea of a serial killer had not even been conceived.

There is something about the lonely highways, the disappearances and runaways, and the strange subculture of van dwellers and illicit prostitution which brings forth so many serial killers. Maybe some act simply because they think they can get away with it. Maybe some continue to kill for so long because they can get away with it.

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However, we can be certain that serial killers have been in the United States long before they were defined as such. The Wild West, that largely undocumented time of rapid American expansion and colonization, was certainly lawless enough to hide more than its fair share.

But the story of serial killers in America does not even start there. It starts before there even was a United States in the modern sense: before the west was won, before the Louisiana purchase of 1803. To find the two men who claim the title, we must journey all the way back to the American War of Independence.

Here we find the Harpe Brothers, the first serial killers in American history.

Loyal to the Crown

The origins of the two brothers, Micajah and Wiley Harpe, are murky and there are sizeable gaps in their early biography. These were not even their original names, and they were thought to be born in what became South Carolina, as Joshua Harper and William Harper.

They were born into a Scottish family and were either brothers or cousins: a record survives of Joshua and William Harper emigrating from Scotland in 1759. This is uncertainty on a generational level: Joshua is believed to have been born anywhere between 1748 and 1770.

The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775 the Harper family was thought to be on the side of the American Patriots, but was rebuffed for their previous associations with British loyalists. The story goes that this was believed to have escalated to the point where the Harper house was attacked, the parents of the boys lynched, and Joshua and William forced to flee to the woods to hide.

Gruesome stories survive of “Big” and “Little” Harpe, as they became known, after this point. They were said to have travelled to North Carolina and fallen in with a Tory rape gang, loyal to Britain but thugs and murderers nonetheless. They were never officially recruited by the British but fleeting glimpses of them appear as the war progressed, at the Battle of King’s Mountain, at the Battles of Blackstocks, and finally at Cowpens.

After Yorktown when it became clear that the British had lost the brothers disappeared, and were only found again living in Tennessee in 1797. It was then that their reign of infamy began.

It seems that their years of lawlessness as British militia in a war-torn country had turned the men into lawless criminals. Thirty nine murders across three states are known to have been committed by the two, but the actual figure is likely much higher.

The pair would kill with almost no provocation. Their victims would often be found in rivers or sources of water with a huge chest wound, into which was stuffed a large quantity of stones to weigh the bodies down. It became a familiar MO.

The murders they committed are often the best way to track their movements. It seems they were forced to flee Tennessee for their crimes, heading into Kentucky and continuing to kill anyone who crossed their path. They were even briefly captured after the murder of a man named John Langford, but they escaped from the state prison holding them and evaded the posse sent to recapture them. They then tortured and killed the young son of the innkeeper who put the authorities on to them.

When the Kentucky Governor put a $300 dollar reward on each of their heads in 1799 the pair fled again, to Illinois. The Kentucky posse that was chasing them stopped short of crossing the Ohio river, fearing the local pirate chief said to hide on the far back.

This chief, Samuel Mason, was indeed formidable and did indeed fall in with the Harpes, but even he and his ruthless gang were appalled at the vicious and depraved crimes of the Harpe brothers. Finally driving them off, the pair would return to Tennessee.

However it was here that their luck finally ran out. In August 1799 the pair were offered shelter by the Stegall family in Webster County. They would go on to murder the Stegall’s four-month-old child because he cried, and his mother for screaming at the discovery.

Another posse was formed, including the vengeful father Moses Stegall. Catching up to the pair, the older Big Harpe was shot, wounded with a tomahawk, and then slowly killed by Moses as he confessed to some twenty murders. 

This was not the end, however. Little Harpe escaped yet again and rejoined Samuel Mason. For four years he went undetected until Mason was shot during a confrontation and died of his wounds. Here Harpe made a fatal error.

Confident in his recent anonymity, Little Harpe presented the body of Samuel Mason to the authorities along with another member of the gang, and tried to claim the bounty on his head. However Harpe was recognized in the attempt arrested, and hanged for his crimes.

A horrific tale of two men without limit and without humanity, but there are stranger parts to this tale than simply their own actions. For much of the time the Harpe Brothers were on the run, evading capture through three states, they travelled with a family each of their own.

These were not happy families, to be sure. At least one of the wives had been kidnapped, and Big Harpe was said to have killed his infant daughter by dashing her head against a tree for crying, the same reason he later gave for killing the Stegall child. Neither of the wives was ever punished for their involvement, and after the death of the brothers both would go on to live normal lives.

The list of their murders is too gruesome to recount, but it seemed they would stop at nothing and kill simply because their paths crossed with strangers. They certainly felt they could get away with their crimes, and for four years and but for a monumental error in judgement that might have been true for Little Harpe. But finally both were made to pay for their murders, and to go down in history as the first serial killers in the United States. 

Header Image: The Harpe Brothers were confirmed to have killed 39 people, often for no reason, and are believed to have killed many more. Source: Picryl / Public Domain.