This text is taken from the pages of Harpole-Harpole-Harpool Families in America Book.  It is now available on CD for $35.00 from Arthur Harpool.  It is a reprint of the 1993 edition of the book.

HARPOLE HISTORY

This family history, like most families, has many legends.  The story as one member of the family remembers it sometimes differs from the way someone else heard it.  However, quite a bit of research has been done on the Harpold Harpole-Harpool family--with the exception of a few Negro families that took the name of their former masters at the end of the Civil War.

Almost all members of the family agree on one thing--that is, the original family was German.  Most research proves this, as the German language was spoken in some of the homes as much as fifty years after the Immigrant family had arrived in America.  Some of the family records of Augusta County, Virginia were translated from German to English.

We have found some members of the family that were under the impression that the early family was Dutch, from Holland, but that was because people of the German states referred to themselves as  "Deutsch,” with a similar pronunciation of the Holland Dutch.

In early Colonial times almost all communities were settled by people of the same nationality, so it would only be natural for a German community to continue to speak their native language.   Only after being around English speaking people and going to schools did the young Harpoles learn to speak English.   When they moved from one state to another it was like moving to another country, and from that the several legends came into being as to how many Harpole men came from Germany, and also when they came.  Some members of the family living today have thought that their grandfather or great-grandfather was among the German immigrants.

According to research by Lyle Harpole of Little Rock, Arkansas, the Harpoles reached Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 28, 1738 on the ship "Belinder Thistle" under the command of Captain George Houston.   The ship sailed from Rotterdam, Holland and there is a possibility that the Harpole family spent some time in Holland after leaving Germany.  We haven't seen the original handwritten passenger list.  Some people read the spelling Herbold, Herboldt, Harpold, or a combination of the three.

According to Lyle Harpole's researches, (see page 14), the immigrant Harpole family included:  John Adam Harpole, 40 years of age, and his wife, Anna

Barbara, 39; Paul, 14; Jacob, 8; Nicholas, 8; Adam, 4; and Henry 2.

This was the original listing; however, the Virginia records of Nicholas Harpole give his birth date as 1735, which would have him at three years old instead of eight.

The German spelling of the name was Harbold.  The name was also spelled Harpoldt, according to family legend.  We haven't found any record, but some of the older members of the family have heard that the "T" was used.   A collection of letters written in the 19th Century has been preserved by the Hagler family in Ohio and was examined by one of our correspondents there some years ago.   She told how one letter written in the spring of 1811 by Isaac Hagler said, "Granny Harpole died December 10."  A short time later Jacob Hagler wrote in the German script to his son and daughter-in-law saying, "Your grandmother Harboldin has died, but Isaac has told you this."  The "in" ending denotes the feminine form of the name. So it seems very probable that the German spelling of the name would have been HARBOLD.

Adam and Nicholas Harpole settled in Virginia.  Court records show Adam in Augusta County, Virginia in 1757.   The spelling was "Harpole".   However, the name was also spelled Harpold and a great many members of the family held on to the Harpold spelling, while other used Harpole.  As early as 1812 some of the War records had the name spelled Harpool in one place and Harpole in another, and at least one member of the family accepted the Harpool spelling, and his descendants still use it.

So far as we know, there are no available records of more than two members of the original family living in Virginia.   However, it is possible that more, or maybe all of them, lived in Virginia.  According to the "History of Pendleton County, West Virginia", Nicholas Harpole moved there in 1763. His family included three sons--Adam (born 1755), Paul, (no birth date), and Solomon (born 1769).   There were also several daughters and another son, Nicholas, Jr., but no record shows any of them in Tennessee.

The three sons of Nicholas--Adam, Paul and Solomon, married in Virginia and moved to Tennessee in the 1790s.   There were already two Harpoles in Tennessee who, according to the best information available, were sons of Adam (1734-1798).   They were John and Martin.  Adam (1734-1798) also had three other sons, Adam, Jr., (b. 1757) who raised his family in Virginia; Michael, who also stayed in Virginia; and Daniel (b.  1768), who supposedly was the Daniel that settled in Coffee County, Tennessee in 1804?

 Court records show John Harpole in Tennessee in 1789 and his brother

Martin a year later.  John had married in Virginia, his oldest daughter being

Born there in 1784.  He married a second time in Tennessee.  Martin Harpole

Married in Sumner County, Tennessee in 1791 to Betsy Rule.  He married a second time years later.  The youngest son, William Carroll (b. 1810), told of his stepmother throwing his clothes out of the house when he was 14 years old and telling him to leave home.  He went to his brother, Squire Harpole, in Bibb County, Alabama.

One legend is that John Harpole's third daughter, Mary, was born aboard a ship coming to America in 1792.  This could be true--court records show John serving on juries in Tennessee in 1789-90-91 and -93, etc.  No record places him there in 1792.  As he was a wealthy man, he could have returned to Europe on a visit that year.

Mary Harpole married Thomas Carr on May 21, 1811.  Their son, John Carr, wrote "Early Times in Middle Tennessee," in which he described frontier life in that section of Tennessee, including an Indian fight in which John and Martin Harpole were involved.

The Harpoles played an important part in settling and developing Central Tennessee.  John Harpole was on a committee to "survey and lay out" the lines for Wilson County, Tennessee in 1799.  The County Court was held in his home until a courthouse could be built.

There were Harpoles in England as early as 1558 but we have no evidence that they are in any way connected with our family.  However, a preliminary search in Bureau Index listed under Chancery Proceedings in the 16th Century a Richard Harpole, 1558-1692; William Harpole, 1558-1692; and Grace Harpole, 1695. Also a John Harpoll and a Robert Harpoole, but none spelled Harpold.

In another place Richard Harpole was spelled Harpoole and William was spelled Harpoolle.  We did not do any further research.

MIDDLE TENNESSEE

AS THE EARLY HARPOLE FAMILIES KNEW IT

There were four Harpoles that moved their families from Virginia to Tennessee between 1784 and 1798.   They were John, Adam, Solomon and Paul. With them were at least two single men that married after settling in Tennessee.   They were Martin and Daniel.   There was also a George Harpole, that, as far as we know, did not arrive with any of the other families, so he must also have lived in Virginia until he was a grown man, then moved to Tennessee and married.

Until about the time the first Harpoles arrived in what is now Tennessee the entire area was a colony of North Carolina, and occupied by the Chickasaw, Cherokee and Creek Indians.

The area of North Middle Tennessee was actually a part of the Chickasaw Nation, but most of the raids on the settlers were from the Cherokees and Creeks.   The Creeks occupied the area that is now Alabama and Northwest Georgia, ranging up into Tennessee.  The Cherokees ranged as far north as the Ohio River on both sides of the Cumberland River east of Nashville into the Western Carolinas.   The Chickasaws made a treaty with the Tennessee settlers in 1783 and thereafter were friendly; however, the treaty was not recognized in Washington and was not honored by the Federal Government.

The first white man to officially explore the area that is now North Central Tennessee was a hunting party~ about 1770.   Some of them came from North Carolina, others from Virginia.  They made camp at a "salt lick" where the city of Nashville now stands and in a report made later by one of the men, Kasper Mansker, a Dutchman, he said, "Never before had I seen such vast herds of buffalo, the whole face of the country seemed to be alive with them." Another of the party, Isaac Bledsoe, who was later killed by Indians, told that in some places the buffalo were so many that, even though on horseback, "'we were fearful of being run over and trampled by them."   Mansker told of killing 19 deer while going only a few hundred yards.  The cane brakes, some of them containing many’ acres of bamboo, vines and grass, were refuge for bear and small game.  Such~ glowing reports of game being so plentiful were no doubt a factor in the early settling of the area.

The first real settlers were led by a Colonel John Donelson and 'Captain James Robertson.  They came in 1779 and are credited with founding Nashville, which they called "French Lick” in honor of a Frenchman from Canada who wandered through the area for 15 or 20 years beginning about 1760.   The Frenchman, named Jacques De Monbreun, told of finding a small party of white people in the area about 1760.   There were five men and a woman.  They had left the woman's husband behind in the wilderness because he was sick and she became the "bride" of another one of the party.  De Monbruen claimed he found the body the next day and buried it.   Where the wanderers came from, or went, no one knew.   This is without a doubt the first white woman to see Middle Tennessee.    The early settlers  built  their forts near the various  "salt licks," as the game was more plentiful there and they also needed the salt for the preservation of their meat.  There was always a detail employed in making salt.

The houses were built of logs, mostly cedar, about 16 to 20 feet square. Some had only bare earth for floor, others had "puncheons" (logs split into thin slabs) laid on the ground or on log sills.  The roof was of split boards. The cracks between the logs were filled with mud in winter, which was knocked out for ventilation in summer.  The cooking was usually done on the fireplace of a rock and grass and mud chimney.  When salt was scarce, as it usually was, fresh meat was buried in ashes to keep it from spoiling.

Agriculture of the area was mostly raising corn.  The corn meal ground on the hominy rock could be carried easily while traveling, to make mush, or gruel (a corn meal soup), or mixed with water to make a paste and poured on a rock near a fire to cook.  They had the "journey cake" (Johnnie cake).  As an iron hoe was usually carried to help clear a place for camp, the bread was sometimes cooked over a fire on the hoe--(hoe cake), or in the hot ashes of the campfire--(ash cake).   These are just a few of the many frontier methods of cooking corn.

There were no  laws  in  the  colony except  the colony itself,  so  the settlers elected "trustees," and even though they probably would not have been legally recognized in North Carolina, the settlers agreed to live according to the judgment of these officers.  These "trustees¹¹ were not paid a salary, nor did they accept a fee.   They had both the judicial and executive powers of duly elected officials, including the power to perform the rites of matrimony.

In the parent state of North Carolina the marriage rites could be said from the pulpit by a minister of the Church of England or one could buy a license.   To secure a marriage license it was necessary to furnish a bond equal to 50 pounds cash.  However, as a great percentage of the frontier women were left widows when their husbands were killed by Indians, it was necessary to have some  legal form of matrimonial rites for the colony.   The first officers to exercise the power were Captain James Robertson and James Shaw at the French Lick Fort, where Nashville now stands.  Among the first couple to be married was Edward Swanson to the Widow Corwin and James Freeland to a Widow Maxwell.  The duty was taken over by preachers in the 1800s.

By 1778 there were seven or eight forts in what is now North Central Tennessee, mostly north of the Cumberland River in the area now covered by

Davidson and Sumner counties, but the Cherokees and Creeks were taking their toll, and by 1780 there were not more than three or four forts in the entire area, even though the Cherokees were making fewer raids at this time.    In March of 1779 they captured a family by the name of Stuart and carried them to the Cherokee Nation.  The Stuarts had small pox and it was said that hundreds of the Cherokees either died of the disease or jumped in the river and drowned as they "burned with fever."

During the 1780s more immigrants arrived from Virginia.  Among them were John and Martin Harpole.   The Blue Ridge Mountains being a barrier to travel on the east, it was easier to come in from the north; therefore, most of the immigrants  came from Virginia.    (All of the Kentucky area was a part of Virginia at that time.)   Sumner County was formed from a part of Davidson County in 1786.

In 1787 North Carolina sent a battalion of troops to help protect the people and a tax was levied to support the troops.  One-fourth of the tax was to be paid in corn, one-half in beef, pork, bear meat or venison, one-eighth in salt, and one-eighth in money.  The corn was valued at four shillings per bushel, beef at five dollars per CWT, good bear meat without bones at eight dollars per hundred, and salt at sixteen dollars per bushel.

The troops stayed in force for two years after which many of them stayed on as settlers, as they were supposed to receive 400 acres of land as bounty for their service.   After North Carolina withdrew, the territory organized itself as the State of Franklin and in 1795 signed a treaty with the Indians. By 1796 the Federal Government accepted it as the State of Tennessee.  By that time Adam Harpole (1755-1838) with his family had settled near his cousins, John and Martin Harpole, in Sumner County.  After the territory became a state many more immigrants came.  With them came Solomon and Paul Harpole with their families, also Daniel and George Harpole, who married in Tennessee.  (As there were several Solomon’s and several Johns in the family, it is confusing if the birth dates aren't compared).

While we have in these pages departed somewhat from the actual history of the Harpole family, we bring these facts to mind to illustrate some of the hardships that were endured by our family and other people of that time, all of which adds to the wonder of such people who leave the security of home to build a new nation.

We did, however, find an interesting account of a later adventure which involved one PETER HARPOLE, taken from "Anecdotes & Adventures" (Missouri) 12 June 1814, which we'd like to pass along, as taken from the book:

"Mr. William Keithley of St. Charles County served as a Major during the entire Indian War.   He was one of the rangers that were sent with Lieut. Campbell in 1814.   They reached Rock River on June 12, 1814.  The next day they met a party of Indians who pretended to be friends and proposed a treaty. The Indians were under Black Hawk.

"While the  treaty was  progressing  the  Indians  proposed  a  foot  race between their champions. and a white soldier.  The wager consisted of blankets and moccasins.   The soldier selected was a man named Peter Harpole.  He was small and the Indians laughed at him and thought he would be an easy conquest. When the race was run he beat there champion, and badly.  They were surprised and gathered around Harpole pointing at him in astonishment and jabbered and made signs among themselves to indicate their feelings.

"Early the next morning Lieut. Campbell's boat was attacked by a large battery of Indians. A number of his men were killed, Harpole being one of the first.   Keithley and several of his men were in the water bathing when they attacked.  They fought about an hour when the Indians shot blazing arrows into the boat and set it on fire.  The men who were bathing lost their clothing on the shore and had to go as far as Cap-au-gris in the dress that 'Adam wore."