A. K. HARPER is the leading merchant of Blount County, and was reared on a farm in Knox County, where he was born in 1853. He remained at home until sixteen or seventeen years old, then accepted a clerkship with G. L. POWELL, of Knoxville, eight years; then came to Maryville, and conducted a general mercantile trade for H. L. BRADLEY & Co., three years, then purchased the stock of goods, and has since conducted a lucrative business. His trade is rapidly increasing and including the grain trade amounts annually to nearly $75,000. In 1875 he married Jennie WALKER, a native of Knox County, to whom one son, Eddie F., was born. Mrs. HARPER, nee WALKER, died in 1876.
In 1882 our subject married Dora REAGAN, a native of Monroe County, to whom three children have been born. A. K., the subject of this sketch, the first-born of four sons and two daughters of James and Elizabeth (KNOTT) HARPER. The father was born in Knox County, and still resides there. His parents came to that county from Virginia.
Source: Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of from Twenty-Five to Thirty Counties of East Tennessee. Chicago: Goodspeed, 1887.