Talitha Harness
Talitha Brown Harness (1830-1889) was a Scott County woman who was murdered, along with her mentally disabled teenage son, inside her Bull Creek home during a botched robbery attempt in 1889. Her accused killers were the first people to die in a documented lynching in Scott County.
Biography
Born in 1830, according to her headstone, very little is known about Talitha Brown’s origins. She does not appear in the census records of Scott County until 1860, when she was married to Thomas Harness (about 1820-1893) and had five children: William (age 12), Jacob (8), Partilla (6), Jeremiah (5), and John.
Later children are believed to have included Leonard (born 1861), David (1865), Noah (1866), and Peter (1871).
Some genealogy records list Talitha’s parents as Noah and Lillie Brown.
Thomas Harness was the son of John Harness and Mary Wilson. He was a Baptist preacher.
Thomas was a half-brother to William Harness, who was murdered — along with his wife — in 1921, leading to another lynching.
Death
Talitha Harness and her youngest son, Peter, were murdered on June 7, 1889. Her husband was away from home at the time. Talitha and Peter, who was mentally disabled, were home alone.
Authorities alleged that two men — 45-year-old Elias Reynolds and his 20-year-old nephew, Thomas “Jeff” Lloyd — approached the Harness home and knocked on the door, believing that Thomas Harness had money.
In the confusion that followed, Talitha Harness was gunned down and Peter fled the home. He was chased down and hacked to death with a garden hoe. His body was carried back to the house, which was set afire. Neighbors discovered the burned home the next morning, with Peter’s legs sticking out of the doorway.
The Knoxville News Sentinel called it “the foulest and most unprovoked murder ever perpetrated in Scott County.”
The two men made off with $74.
Reynolds and Lloyd were later arrested in Jellico, Tenn. by Milton Hollingsworth, an ex-sheriff of Campbell County. They were broken out of jail on June 12, 1889, by a lynch mob and hanged in a tree along what is now Baker Highway. It was the first documented lynching in Scott County’s history.
More: Scott County’s first lynching
Aftermath
Talitha and Peter Harness were buried on a ridgetop above Bull Creek, near Round Mountain on what is today the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.
Interestingly, Talitha Harness’s simple, homemade headstone is inscribed “Almiry Brown Harness” along with “Born 1854.”