Stop Eleven: First Jail

On July 16, 1792, the first court, by proclamation of the first sheriff, Robert Houston, met in John Stone’s house on Lot 34 (where the City County Building is now). At that meeting, Houston demanded that a better jail be built. The court approved the motion. The dimensions of this jail were “sixteen feet square, the logs to be a foot square, the lower floor to be laid of logs that size, to be laid double and crosswise with oak plank, one and a half inches thick and well spiked.” “It was enclosed with long palisades driven deeply into the ground and sharpened at the top.”(Rule Pg 47 and 82).

The Harpe brothers are often considered the earliest documented serial killers in US history. Loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution and being outcasts after the war, they began robbing and killing settlers in the frontier west of Appalachia. Although passing themselves off as brothers, they were actually probably first cousins. The Harpe Brothers are known to have murdered thirty nine people, but the number may be as high as fifty. There are many accounts in the Knoxville Gazette of that period of their psychotic savagery. In the spring of 1797, they were living in a cabin on Beaver Creek near Powell. On June 1, 1797, Wiley Harpe married Sarah Rice, which was recorded in the Knox County Courthouse marriage records. Although never arrested in Knoxville, they were driven from town after being charged with stealing livestock and the gruesome murder of a man named Johnson. From Knoxville, the brothers fled to Kentucky and continued their crime spree. Micajah was beheaded in Webster County, Kentucky, and Wiley was executed by hanging and beheaded. His head was placed high on a stake on the Natchez Trace as a warning to other outlaws.

Standard tour mission:

Take a photo of your team members in handcuffs that are in your prop bag.

Virtual tour trivia questions:

In 1775, the Harpe brothers left North Carolina for Virginia, but the American Revolution interrupted those plans. What jobs were they looking for in Virginia?

The Harpe brothers are part of the “jury of the damned” in what 1941 film?