Why Traveling In Colonial America Was SUPER Dangerous

near Dixon Kentucky there is a highway junction where U.S. Highway 41 meets State Highway 56. It is labeled on the map as Harps Head Road State Historic Site and its name hints at one of the most notorious crime waves in history. of the United States generated by the same war that created the country as we know it this is the story of the first Hart brothers serial killers in the United States before we begin I want to give a quick warning that we are going to talk about some things quite unpleasant in this video, in fact, It will be a miracle that this video is not demonetized, don't think that just because we are talking about historical events that it is somehow tamer or more sanitized because it was a simpler time or whatever, it is quite the opposite.

I'm just saying I know. Some of you watch my videos with your children. This may be one of those episodes where they just want to send them to the other room. Play a different video for them. Here I will link a video about intelligent animals. nice they're gone alright let's get started let's get started first let's set the scene it's the late 18th century the United States as we know it doesn't really exist but tensions between the colonies and the British Empire are at an all time high Higher, protests broke out in multiple cities in 1770, British troops fired on a group of protesters in Boston, killing three on the spot, two more later died from their wounds.

This became known as the Boston Massacre, although like most things in history, the word Massacre is a bit of a embellishment, the peaceful protesters looked more like a drunken mob that set upon nine redcoats who They panicked and shot into the crowd, but I mean, there's still tension three years later, the Boston Tea Party occurred when protesters threw over 300 chests of British tea into the harbor to protest. the Tea Act, which led to the most caffeinated fish of all time, this all came to a head when fighting began in Lexington and Concord, triggering the American Revolutionary War in 1775, but like the Massacre of Boston was not so one-sided.

Since we were led to believe that not everyone in the colonies agreed with the revolution, there were many people who were doing well with the British and wanted to stay with them, like think about how divided we are today, right? They were just as divided, but in reality they were at war, acts of violence broke out between neighbors on different sides all the time, this was especially true on the border, which at the time were territories like Kentucky and Tennessee, so the idea of the frontier is Nowadays it's a more abstract concept, there's nothing really today that you can compare the frontier to, it wasn't just an unstable Savage Land, it was a kind of Lawless, every man for himself, no There was authority to turn to if you got into trouble and there were many ways to get into trouble, the roads were little more than worn Indian trails through overgrown forests where around every corner, behind every tree, there might be a band of bandits ready to rob you or hostile NATO is ready to protect their land with violence. and it is into this violent divided world that the Hart brothers emerged, so another thing about this time period is that it was a time of myths and legends like Johnny Appleseed and Daniel Boone, larger than life heroes who tamed the wilderness and They created a path to manifest destiny, but where you will find larger than life heroes, you will also find larger than life villains, and that was the Hart brothers, so all that has to say is that it is a challenge to discern what it is. a fact and what is a legend in this story, these are events that took place.

It's been over 200 years since they involved some pretty shady guys, so let's start with the story. The story is that they grew up in a family of loyalists who sided with the crown and things escalated to the point that one day a group of revolutionaries attacked her family and lynched them. His parents, the Hart brothers, fled to the desert where they were taken in by an Indian tribe. The tribe taught them how to survive in the bush and, more importantly, how to fight and kill like warriors, and they spent the rest of their lives after that. using those abilities to take revenge on the entire human race, murdering anyone who crossed his path and showing cruelty beyond all human understanding, that's the story, but there are some problems with this story, first of all, the heart .

The brothers were not brothers at all. They were actually cousins, their parents were Scottish immigrants who settled in North Carolina and grew up together, their names were makisha and Wiley harp, but they adopted the nicknames big and little harp because you know one was bigger than the other, no He was the most creative. nicknames I've ever heard, but they did the job makaija big harp was a little older and obviously larger contemporary accounts described him as the more impulsive and violent of the two and often used his size to get his way Wiley Little Harp was The Mastermind The duo is much more strategic and scheming, but just as ruthless now as in the rest of their origin story.

It is not known for certain if his parents were actually murdered by revolutionaries, but as loyalists they definitely had targets on their backs and this tension and ostracism definitely. would have shaped their attitudes towards the world as they grew up and the part about them being taken in again by Indian tribes it's hard to say what really happened to them, but white settlers mixed with Indian tribes all the time, especially on the frontier, from In fact, I was reading in a book about how many of the early settlers left their European communities to go live with Indian communities because they preferred their way of life, especially in the northeast, the Hadan Asani tribes, the Five Nations tribes were very much more egalitarian and democratic than and the Europeans who came and were all obsessed with status and social class and all that, in fact it has been argued that militarism and the American colonists gave them that streak of independence and democracy that led them towards revolution, um, I know I talked before about the Boston Tea Party, people in the Boston Tea Party dressed up as Mohawk Indians because that represented the more democratic way of life that they wanted, but as I mentioned, some people were loyal to the British and That's the side the Brothers at Heart were a part of and when the Revolutionary War took hold, they joined a conservative gang in North Carolina and began guerrilla warfare against the patriot settlers.

That's one way to put it. The other way of saying it is that the war gave them a good excuse to assault, rob and murder people, although they actually joined the British in a couple of battles, including the Battle of Blackstock in 1780 and the cow pens in 1781. And then the Americans defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the war was over, meaning those

colonial

patriots they had been terrorizing and fighting against were now in charge, so they came out from North Carolina and headed west to Tennessee, which at the time was just mostly Indian territory.

By the way, that's another thing that the history of what the Hart brothers teach us is that the way we learn about American history is that we fought in the war and then the war ended and all was well in the world, but the The truth is much more complicated than that, as I said before. There were major fractures during the Revolutionary War and those fractures did not disappear once the war ended, in fact the violence of the war here only intensified hostilities and retaliation, so yes, they moved to Tennessee where they were out of the jurisdiction of the authorities and took with them a trio of women named Maria Davidson Susan Wood and Sarah Rice again the details are confusing here but some say they were wives and accomplices of the Hart brothers others say they were kidnapped there is a public record of the Wiley Hart Sarah Rice's marriage, but apparently they all shared the women, so either they were like a Bunny and Clyde polyamorous situation or they were two harem monsters of kidnapping victims, either way they headed west and hid in the Cherokee Chickamauga village of Nickajack, near present-day Chattanooga, for about 12 or 13 years they ran a hog farm and earned a reputation as men you didn't mess with because they didn't hesitate to murder you.

I mean, the frontier was full of rogues and bandits hiding from the authorities and taking advantage of travelers and new settlers, but even among the bad guys, the Hart brothers stood out, in fact, they were not alone, they had a gang of other outlaws with them, one of whom was a guy named Moses Doss and maybe this has some kind of clue. as to what exactly the relationship was with the women, but at some point Moses was worried about them, maybe they expressed concern to them, maybe he threatened to take them to some authorities or something, but either way they killed him, this goes became a recurring theme, so in 1797 they were living in a cabin on Beavers Creek, near Knoxville, Tennessee, and that's when something changed and the Hart brothers got moving.

One story is that people began to notice that their pig farm seemed to have run out of pigs. but they also kept coming to the market to sell pigs all the time and at the same time, probably unrelated, a lot of other people's pigs were disappearing and they had probably been stealing pigs for a long time, but no one wanted to mess with them, but in 1796 Tennessee became a state meaning there was now some form of law and order in the area, so yes it was time to hit the road, so in 1798 they set out on a trail of death and destruction through Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. , for which they are still known. day and it all started with a man they met named Johnson in a bar or a Rowdy groggery as they called it, so as the story goes, they met the man and noticed he had a nice full purse and were convinced to travel with him.

Now this wasn't that unusual back then, like I said, the roads were

super

dangerous

so people tended to travel in groups, so the harps convinced them that they could help keep him safe, so They left together and instead killed him and took his money, a passerby found his body floating in the Holston River a few days later, they had cut it open and filled it with stones, which became something of a Hard trademark. Brothers, they would fill the body cavity with rocks and throw it into a river to sink to the bottom, which is a horrible thing because even with all the murders we know they committed, there are probably tons more that we don't know about because the bodies never were found, the harps then moved east towards the Cumberland Gap to join their wives, they killed two more times while on Wilderness Road, this time it was a pair of Travelers named Paka and Bates, the second time it was a young man Langford's body was found very well by a nearby innkeeper who recognized him upon discovering that it was the harps that committed it, with his rate of violence increasing, he was formed a group and pursued the harps who were captured on Christmas Day 1799.

They were imprisoned in Stanford Kentucky enough evidence was found for a trial in the Danville Kentucky District Court, but just before the trial date in March the harps escaped, some think that with the help of their wives in April the Governor of Kentucky placed a reward of 300 on each of their heads. At around seven thousand dollars in today's money, you'd think they'd consider it too close for comfort and lay low for a while, but they didn't. They kept killing people. They headed west, where they killed two more men. On the trail and then near the mouth of Saline Creek they met three men who were camping and joined them for some pastries.

I'm kidding, they were killed and eventually found in an area called Cave-in Rock in southern Illinois which was a stronghold of the river pirate Samuel Mason, yes I mentioned bands of bandits and thieves on the trails and stuff like that. Did I mention the river pirates? The Mason gang used the cave as a hideout and from there they would attack the incoming supply ships. Ohio River and this seemed to be as good a place as any for the harps to settle for a time with their wives and three children. Oh yeah, they had some kids at this point and this fit well for a while, but eventually The Harps found a way to cause more problems.

Now keep in mind that the Mason gang was one of the most brutal pirate gangs out there, but even they saw the harsh brutality and relaxed because the harps apparently enjoyed taking the Travelers to the top of the cliff, stripping them naked andthen throwing them off the cliff like you do so yeah the Mason gang threw them out and this is really what made the harps stand out there were tons of thieves that would kill to protect themselves or to serve their own interests but the harps who killed for sport enjoyed them. Once they were dismissed from the Mason gang, they returned to East Tennessee and continued their killing spree.

In July 1798, they killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Hardin, and a boy named Brown. More were soon discovered. William Ballard's bodies were disemboweled and thrown into the Holston River. James Brassell had his throat slit and was found in Brussels Pommel, and John Graves and his teenage son had their heads cut off with an ax in south central Kentucky and Logan County, Kentucky. They killed a girl, a young slave girl, and an entire family who were sleeping in a camp. They also killed and disembowelled a man named Trial Bridge in August, with violence escalating and a bounty on his head.

They found themselves being chased by several groups and at some point, the gang was closing in on them. Harp's little daughter started crying and you know the crying threatened to give them away, so she hit his head against a tree. She would later confess genuine remorse for this. It is the only murder she claimed to feel bad about, but it was in the summer of 1799 when it all finally caught up with the Hart brothers. They arrived at Moses Stegall's home in Webster County, Kentucky, and bought the room for the night. It was kind of a tradition back then that if you had a house and there were Travelers coming across the border, it was tradition to house them in your house while there they killed an overnight guest named Major William.

I love the story, apparently they had to share a room with love, he was snoring a little loudly, so much so that it put an end to it and then they went into the kitchen and demanded that Mystic make them some food, she agreed, but then her four-year-old boy Months she started crying and well, I know how the big harp dealt with crying babies and when Mrs. Stiegel turned around and saw the side of the big harp cutting her son's throat and she screamed, they killed her too and then they burned the cabin , this event would be the harp's undoing when Moses Siegel returned home. and saw what happened, he quickly found a gang and vigilante justice was about to take over when Steagall's gang caught up with them, they had already murdered two more men named Hudgins and Gilmore along the way as the gang closed in around their camp, little escaped. but Big was chased, they managed to shoot him once in the leg and once in the back and, according to legend, while they bled him, he confessed his murders to the men who were next to him waiting for him to die, that was when Moses Stegall took the Big's butcher knife and cut off his head according to the story, he did it while Big was still alive and he did it as slowly as possible to extend the agony.

Makaija's last words were: "You're a damn tough butcher, but cut." Go ahead and to hell with it once he was done Moses took Big's head and impaled it on a tree branch near the intersection of a local road to serve as a warning to other potential bandits, that place became known as Harps Head Road that I mentioned. at the beginning of this video, but he little escaped him, he headed west again with the women and returned to the Mason gang in Cave and Rock, this time using the name John Sutton. There he managed to stay alive for another four years before his insatiable greed took over.

The best thing about it is that Mason had a bounty of two thousand dollars on his head, which today is about fifty thousand dollars, so little, and another pirate turned on Mason and decapitated him, they took the head to receive the reward money and when they began to leave a victim of a previous Riverboat attack recognized them, the authorities immediately arrested him, but he escaped again, maybe his nickname should have been maybe you should have stuck with Wiley, that would have been better than little, but a group caught up with him and he was finally brought to justice.

Sentenced and hanged to death and just to make sure he was dead they also cut off his head and placed it on a stake near Natchez Trace as a warning to other outlaws. It was February 1804 and his bloody wave of violence finally arrived. In the end, the three women were arrested and tried, but the community took pity on them again. There is still a debate about whether or not they were willing accomplices or victims of kidnapping, but in this case they were seen as victims or were able to convince people that. Anyway, perhaps one piece of evidence that helped convince the jury was the fact that, um, that whole thing where Mikaizer murdered his own son, apparently that happened several times, there were three children among the five that survived, but apparently they had several more children. of which were sent out of convenience, it is difficult to imagine a woman willing to stay with someone who does that to her children or actively participate in it, of course, there are also psychopathic women, regardless of the fact that all three married into the families of King and lived. the rest of their lives in peace in the end the harps claimed to have killed 39 people but that number may be closer to 50 or more like I said before the way they dispose of the bodies means there could have been many more that no one knew About the heart name became synonymous with violence, lawlessness and unspeakable evil and many family members changed their surnames to hide the fact that they were related to them, some simply dropping the E.

While others changed their name significantly, In fact, there is a rumor that Wyatt Earp was a descendant of the Heart Harp Brothers Earp, but kind of bear with me because this might get pretentious for just a second, aren't we all descendants of the Heart Brothers? The United States, for all its positive aspects, has always had a dark side. tensions that were created in the fire of the Revolution the tensions that created the harps that still exist do not take the same form as they used to have evolved over time but they are still there, as if woven into the fabric of our history, you know, we celebrate the great heroes of the revolution, but we forget that the Revolution was disorderly and created fractures that led to indescribable violence.

There are similar fractures in society today, fractures that manifest in evil and violent acts with overwhelming and relentless regularity. I'm working too hard on this. I'm just saying there are lessons to be learned from the heart. This isn't just a salacious story about a couple of serial killers, they were serial killers trained from the very birth of this nation. Every rose has Es Thorn, you could even say every action has an equal and opposite reaction, that's science, actually, it's a classic mechanic that you can learn more about with today's brilliant sponsor, so here's the deal . If you watch this channel, you probably enjoy learning, maybe you have problems with math and physics stuff in school, I know, the thing is that everyone learns in different ways and the way we were taught in school may not have been the best for you and that sucks because it makes it a lot harder and you're a lot more likely to just give up on everything, if that was the case for you too you might want to check out brilliant because brilliant is a completely different learning style.

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