Note 15 — The Harpes—Big Harpe’s Ride to Death

Maj. William Stewart was one of the most eccentric characters in early Kentucky history. His life is full of suggestions for romance and song. He was born in South Carolina about 1772, and, at the age of eighteen, “getting into some difficulties, he left his native state.” He went to Nashville, says Finley, and from there started for Henderson—possibly with the intention of continuing to Cave-in-Rock. On his way north he joined a man and wife going to the Green River country. To what extent they influenced him is not known. However, when the three travelers reached the place that later became Russellville, they decided to settle there. In 1791 he left Logan County and “after years of toil, hunting, and nobody knows what else, he finally settled in Stanford and, in 1795, became a dry goods clerk for one Ballenger”—the same man who, a few years later, went in pursuit of the Harpes. In 1796 he returned to Logan County and died there in 1852. He was the first sheriff of Logan County. Collins says: “He was one of the celebrities of the place ... faithful to his friends, and dangerous to his foes.”

Smith in a chapter devoted to Stewart calls him William Stout: “Always eccentric in his material and style of dress—often he appeared attired in an entire suit made of various colored ‘lists,’ taken from the finest broadcloths sewed together, fantastically cut and fitted to his person, while the buttons on his coat and pantaloons were quarter dollars, United States coin, with eyes attached by his own ingenuity (for he was a worker in metals) and his vest buttoned with genuine United States dimes. This dress, however, was rather for high days and holidays.... On the morning of the day on which he died, he, with but little aid, drew on his curiously constituted, many colored suit of clothes, and in that attire he died and was buried.” [121]