1828: Annice, a slave

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(Thanks to Meaghan Good of the Charley Project for the guest post. -ed.)

On this date in 1828, a slave named Annice was executed on a public gallows in Liberty, Missouri. She was probably not the first female slave to face capital punishment in Missouri, a U.S. state since 1821, but she is the first one whose case can be adequately documented.

Annice had drowned five slave children in Clay County on some unspecified date in the summer of 1828; she was indicted on July 27. All six of them — Annice and five victims — were the property of Jeremiah Prior. Those victims were Ann, Phebe, and Nancy, whose age and parentage are not specified, plus Annice’s own children Billy, five, and Nelly, two. It was reported that she was discovered whilst attempting to drown yet another of her children.

According to the indictment, Annice “pushed the said [children] into a certain collection of water of the depth of five feet and there choaked, suffocated and drowned of which the said [children] instantly died.”

In her book Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865, author Harriet C. Frazier writes of Annice’s case,

Because the records contain no statement from her, her motivation may only be surmised. Most likely, it was the same as Missouri’s many slave mothers … who either attempted or accomplished the murder of their offspring. Without “the curse of involuntary servitude” … almost certainly, Annice would never have systematically drowned one child after another, thereby depriving her owner of no fewer than five potentially valuable properties.

On this day..

Possibly related executions: