In western Kentucky, about three miles north of Dixon, a marker sits on the west side of Highway 41-A. Emblazoned with “Frontier Justice,” it marks the approximate spot where the head of the insatiable murderer Micajah Harpe was displayed as a warning to all outlaws.

Harpe (alternately spelled Harp) had been separated from his noggin, allegedly while still breathing (well, at the first cut, anyway), on August 24, 1799, by an understandably vengeful Moses Stegall. Harpe had ruthlessly slaughtered his wife and child. Paybacks are hell, and Harpe was on his way. That stretch of highway is known locally as Harpe’s Head Road. Whether his was stuck on a pike or hung from a tree is a piece of historical argument that will never be settled.

Big Harpe, as he was called, was killed near the Pond River in what is now Muhlenberg County. A posse had pursued him and his younger brother Wiley (known as Little Harpe) after the massacre at the Stegall homestead. One member of the posse, John Leiper, had shot Big as he was attempting to ride away on a stolen horse. Not one to go quietly, Big still had to be drug out of the saddle before Stegall guillotined him the hard way.

And what on earth does any of this have to do with Knoxville? Quite a bit, actually. There were three connections on that day of frontier justice to our Scruffy Little City, which in the 1790s was a lot closer to rough’n tumble than it was genteel.

Up first are the Harpe Brothers, who may have been born in Scotland but most likely Orange County, North Carolina. It’s also possible they weren’t really brothers, but cousins. At the very least, Big Harpe’s father was reportedly a Tory loyalist, and the two young men may have followed him to the Battle of King’s Mountain and possibly at Cowpens and Blackstocks, committing atrocities, including a penchant for kidnapping teenage girls, that are now considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Tories were ordered out of North Carolina after the Revolution. While they were supposed to head to the Mississippi territory, the first tried settling just outside Knoxville along Beaver Creek, six to eight miles west of town, which would mean northwest. My best guess puts them somewhere along the west end of Powell to the east end of Karns.

The Harpe Brothers weren’t just your everyday bandit highwaymen. They were indiscriminate, cruel, psychopaths who brandished the loser loyalist chip on their shoulders against pretty much everyone they came across. Few survived random encounters with them, including one of Big’s own children (I’ll spare you the details). They killed just to kill. Their time in Knox County only lasted a couple of years, as pretty soon neighbors suspected them of horse, cattle and hog stealing and arson once those accusations were made. They murdered a man at Hughes Tavern on their way out of town and continued their rampage along the Wilderness Road and the Natchez Trace.

But before leaving, Little married a preacher’s daughter here in Knox County named Sarah “Sally” Rice. Big had a legal wife and a bonus concubine, so the two brothers dragged their harem and children along through their treacherous escapades. After Big was killed and Little disappeared, Sally eventually made it back to Knoxville and her family, remarried and had a normal life.

Lastly, Moses Stegall, who gave Big Harpe his final, much deserved, indignity, reportedly lived in Knoxville for a time before eventually settling in Kentucky. Little Harpe joined up with another gang after the death of his brother. The less cruel of the two, he managed to stay on the run for another five years, joining Samuel Mason’s Cave-in-Rock gang in Illinois. Recognized along with another oulaw after they tried to present the deceased Mason’s head to collect a bounty, he was arrested, tried and hanged in Mississippi. His head was piked along the Natchez Trace as a warning to ne’er-do-wells, just like his brother.

The brothers confessed to 39 killings, but the number is believed to be closer to 50, possibly more. They were America’s first documented serial killers, and, for a time, made themselves right here at home.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: McClung digital collection-Knox County Library, Knoxville Journal digital archives, The Tennessee Encyclopedia, Blood in the Wilderness: The Story of the Harps, America’s First Serial Killers, by Jack Edward Shay, National Archives/Library of Congress