A historical marker in Kentucky explaining the details of outlaw Micajah "Big" Harpe's execution. Philip Alston and his son Peter were associates of the Harpes.
Did you know Nashville has a database of the transactions the city recorded of the disposition of enslaved people? This is a game-changer for anyone with Black ancestors in town. Let me be clear: It’s not a record of everyone who was enslaved in Davidson County. It is, however, a record of the times that the city government became involved in the recording of what happened to them — sales, transfers after owner’s deaths, emancipations, etc. And sometimes there’s a lot of family information — who was married to whom, who had which kids — that is hard to come by for descendants of enslaved people.
To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, think of The Hermitage. The staff at Andrew Jackson’s home has spent the past two decades trying to nail down a clear understanding of who was enslaved at The Hermitage and how they were related to each other. I can’t think of a better studied, better documented group of enslaved people than the community at The Hermitage. There is a PDF on The Hermitage's website that gives you an idea of their enslaved families. And the information from the city’s database regarding the people Andrew Jackson enslaved is not extensive. There are just eight entries where Jackson is listed as the owner.
But here’s the big deal. The Hermitage has Squire and Gincy’s children as Morgan and Cancer. The city’s database records two other children of Squire and Gincy: George and Davy. The documented size of Squire and Gincy’s family just doubled. The Hermitage has Blacksmith Aaron and his wife Hannah as having kids named Byron, Charlotte, Moses and Mary. The city’s database also mentions a son named Ned. The city also records Jackson having enslaved a girl named Phan. She’s not on The Hermitage’s PDF.
Just eight entries, and fully half of them appear to have information we didn’t have before. There’s going to be a lot worth talking about in here in the future, for sure.
But I want to focus now on the transaction that struck me as completely wackadoo when I saw it. In August 1784, Philip Alston sold 20 people to John Turnbull of the Chickasaw Nation. Nashville had been a town for five years. Everything was still mostly uncultivated. It was still practically impossible to get from the official United States to Nashville in one piece. At least a couple of people in your traveling party were going to die at Chattanooga. Who in the world was rich enough to enslave 20 people he could sell in Nashville at that time? I don’t know how to stress this enough. Nashville was an isolated village under frequent attack. Things were precarious. Philip Alston would not have easily been able to replace 20 slaves in Nashville at that time.
John Turnbull I know. He was a Scottish trader with ties to both the Chickasaw and the Choctaw nations. He and his family had a series of plantations along the Mississippi, so it is not surprising, considering his trade and landholdings, that he’d want that large a labor force that early — though why he’d come to Nashville instead of, say, New Orleans is something I don’t know.
Alston’s name rang a bell, but I couldn’t immediately place him. I just had a sense that it was a red flag. So I Googled. And Philip Alston, one of the signers of the Cumberland Contract? Selling slaves to one of the most important traders in the area? Philip Alston was a counterfeiter and land pirate.
Granted, he might not have been a land pirate until after he left Nashville, but I feel fairly confident that we can revoke Timothy Demonbreun’s title of “Most Scandalous Nashvillian,” because Timothy Demonbreun — at least as far as anyone knows — didn’t lead a life of crime and raise a dangerous killer as a son.
I was somewhat ready to disregard Alston’s life of crime, since it wasn’t until he moved to Kentucky that he seems to have become really bad. Sorry, Kentucky, but we’re a Nashville publication. Your land pirates are your own problem.
Except it wasn’t just like Philip Alston showed up at Nashville, maybe lived at Mansker’s Station for a while, then disappeared into the wilds of Western Kentucky, never to intersect with Nashville history again. Philip Alston moved up to what is now Logan County, Ky., and he built a station (a privately owned fort) outside of what is now Russellville, near the confluence of Whippoorwill Creek and the Red River. After a bit, his son-in-law James Dromgoole built his own station a few miles southeast. In 1806, Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel nearby. In 1818, Dromgoole’s Station changed its name to Adairville. Super convenient that Jackson and Dickinson knew where some outlaws were holed up doing outlaw things and might not mind an outlawed duel.
But back to the 1700s. Philip Alston had to flee Logan County and ended up in Muhlenberg County, where he had some land near where Pond Creek and Caney Creek converge. If you know anything about land pirates and Muhlenberg County sounds familiar, it’s because that’s where a posse finally caught up with the Harpe Brothers and killed Big Harpe. You can read all about that in this amazing cover story late Scene editor Jim Ridley and his brother Read Ridley wrote about the Harpe brothers in 2013.
But at the time Philip was moving north, the Harpes were still alive, and the Alston family and the Harpes were all about to hook up with Samuel Mason and his band of pirates headquartered out of Cave-in-Rock, Ill.
From what we can tell, living with a brood of vipers didn’t suit Philip. Supposedly he moved to New Madrid and lived out the rest of his life in obscurity. But his son Peter stayed with the Harpes and Samuel Mason.
Now here’s an example of my favorite thing about Nashville history. Jim Ridley told us the end to Peter Alston’s life without any of us knowing it:
Four years later, in Greenville, Miss., two men strode into the local circuit court bearing a foul parcel. It was a huge lump of blue clay, said to contain a prize worth $2,000 in reward money: the head of the dread river pirate Samuel Mason. The offer said "dead or alive," the leader said, and they tomahawked Mason and took them at their word.
First, though, the head had to be authenticated. That should have been a snap: Mason was noted for a single tooth that protruded like a fang. But another matter of authentication soon trumped the skull. According to Daniels, one Captain Stump visiting from Kentucky burst into the courtroom.
"Why, that man's Wiley Harpe!" he exclaimed.
[…]
There, before the crowd, stood a demon in the flesh: the last of the fearsome Harpe brothers, Wiley Harpe. As if the long-dead Johnson had delivered retribution from his watery grave, Little Harpe was tried and hanged. His own head was placed on a pike near Greenville for the honest world to see.
The second man with Wiley Harpe? Who hanged with him and whose head was also placed on a pike along the Natchez Trace? Peter Alston, who had been a boy in a brand-new Nashville.
