From the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, only one small instance of the “terrible example” in store for the Garden State’s “large body of slaves to be kept in subjection.”
May 10, 1744 — The negro man “Jan,” of Johonnes Van Houten, was tried “for poysoning and attempting to do the same to several blacks at the township of Bergen; to wit, the negro man of Arent Toers, named Lowis, and has some time past poysoned two wenches of Garret Ross, of the same precinct, and attempted several more.” Convicted and sentenced to be hanged May 11, between 10 and 12, at Bergen; “at the suitablest place, where Peter Marselis and Michel Vreeland shall think proper.”
Was it the slave trade that capitalized the Van Houten cracker empire?
On this day..
- 2012: Zhang Jianfei, job-seeker
- Feast Day of Saint Mocius
- 1748: Arthur Gray and William Rowland, Hawkhurst Gang smugglers
- 1528: Eitelhans Langenmantel, Thomas Jefferson ancestor
- Corpses Strewn: New York's slave conspiracy of 1741
- 1741: Caesar and Prince, leaders of a plot to burn New York?
- 1915: Basanta Kumar Biswas, bomber
- 1928: Clarence "Buck" Kelly, testicle donor
- 1858: William and Daniel Cormack, for murdering John Ellis
- 1958: Khosrow Roozbeh
- 1939: Evgeny Miller, White Russian
- 1891: The Namoa pirates
- 1685: Margaret McLachlan and Margaret Wilson, the Solway Martyrs