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Crawford County is a county located in the east-central portion of the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 Census, the population was 23,056. Its county seat is Steelville. The county was organized in 1829 and is named after U.S. Senator William H. Crawford of Georgia.
Steelville is a city in Crawford County, Missouri, United States. The population was 1,472 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Crawford County. Steelville is the hometown of Congressman Albert Reeves and Missouri State Representative Jason Chipman. The town was named after the landowner James Steel.
The Conspiracy of 1741, also known as the Slave Insurrection of 1741, was a purported plot by slaves and poor whites in the British colony of New York in 1741 to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires. Historians disagree as to whether such a plot existed and, if there was one, its scale. During the court cases, the prosecution kept changing the grounds of accusation, ending with linking the insurrection to a "Popish" plot by Spaniards and other Catholics.
Lucy Delaney was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry, filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.
Polly Berry was an African American woman notable for winning two freedom suits in St. Louis, one for herself, which she won in 1843, and one for her daughter Lucy, which she won in 1844. Having acquired the surnames of her slaveholders, she was also known as Polly Crockett and Polly Wash, the latter of which was the name used in her freedom suit.
Sarah Cloys/Cloyce was among the many accused during Salem Witch Trials including two of her older sisters, Rebecca Nurse and Mary Eastey, who were both executed. Cloys/Cloyce was about 50-years-old at the time and was held without bail in cramped prisons for many months before her release.
Charles Lilburn Lewis, sometimes referred to as Charles Lilburn Lewis of Monteagle, was one of the founders of Milton, Virginia, as well as one of the signers of Albemarle County, Virginia's Declaration of Independence in 1779. Married to Lucy Jefferson, the sister of President Thomas Jefferson, he was among the elite class of plantation owners until the turn of the 19th century when he and his children lost their fortunes. Two of his daughters were married and stayed in Virginia, while the remainder of his family left for Kentucky. They had a difficult life there, with his wife, son Randolph, daughter-in-law Mary, and Lilburne's wife having died by early 1812. Lewis was left to care for unmarried daughters, grandchildren, and the family's slaves. Sons Isham and Lilburne brutally murdered an enslaved boy named George in December 1811. After it was determined that the men were involved, Lilburne killed himself and Isham escaped jail and died following his service in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
Marguerite Scypion, also known in court files as Marguerite, was an African-Natchez woman, born into slavery in St. Louis, then located in French Upper Louisiana. She was held first by Joseph Tayon and later by Jean Pierre Chouteau, one of the most powerful men in the city.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
Mary Prince is an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder who then became the nanny for Amy Carter, the daughter of US President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter, and was eventually granted a full pardon.
Slavery has been forbidden in the state of Minnesota since that state's admission to the Union in 1858. The second section of the first Article of the state's constitution, drafted in 1857, provides that:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude from the State otherwise there is the punishment of crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
Harriet Robinson Scott was an African American woman who fought for her freedom alongside her husband, Dred Scott, for eleven years. Their legal battle culminated in the infamous United States Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. On April 6, 1846, attorney Francis B. Murdoch had initiated Harriet v. Irene Emerson in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, making the Scotts the first and only married couple to file separate freedom suits in tandem.
State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave was an 1855 murder trial held in the Circuit Court of Callaway County, Missouri, in which a slave woman named Celia was tried for the first-degree murder of her owner, Robert Newsom. Celia was convicted by a jury of twelve white men and sentenced to death. An appeal of the conviction was denied by the Supreme Court of Missouri in December 1855, and Celia was hanged on December 21, 1855.
Snelson-Brinker House was a historic home located near Steelville, Crawford County, Missouri. It was built by Levi Lane Snelson in 1834, as a one-story, double-pen log dwelling, and sold to John B. Brinker in 1837. Later that year, the property was the site of the murder of Brinker's two-year-old daughter Vienna, for which Mary the slave became the youngest person to be executed in Missouri history. The house was extensively rebuilt in the late 1980s. Also on the property are the log and frame smokehouse/root cellar, a cast iron pump, an open field and beyond the field is a cemetery with graves dating back to the 1830s. The property was eventually operated by the St. James Historical Preservation Society as a historic house museum.
Annice was the first female slave known to have been executed in Missouri. She was hanged for the murders of five children, two of whom were her own.
Celia was a slave found guilty of the first-degree murder of Robert Newsom, her master, in Callaway County, Missouri. Her defense team, led by John Jameson, argued an affirmative defense: Celia killed Robert Newsom by accident in self-defense to stop Newsom from raping her, which was a controversial argument at the time. Celia was ultimately executed by hanging following a denied appeal in December 1855. Celia's memory was revitalized by civil rights activist Margaret Bush Wilson who commissioned a portrait of Celia from Solomon Thurman.
Robert Wash served on the Supreme Court of Missouri from September 1825 to May 1837. During his term, the pro-slavery judge, who owned slaves himself, wrote the dissenting opinion on several important freedom suits, including Milly v. Smith, Julia v. McKinney and Marguerite v. Chouteau. However, he did join in the unanimous finding for the plaintiff in the landmark Rachel v. Walker case.
Polly Strong was an enslaved woman in the Northwest Territory, in present-day Indiana. She was born after the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. Slavery was prohibited by the Constitution of Indiana in 1816. Two years later, Strong's mother Jenny and attorney Moses Tabbs asked for a writ of habeas corpus for Polly and her brother James in 1818. Judge Thomas H. Blake produced indentures, Polly for 12 more years and James for four more years of servitude. The case was dismissed in 1819.
The Maryland Witch Trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in Colonial Maryland between June 1654, and October 1712. It was not unique, but is a Colonial American example of the much broader phenomenon of witch trials in the early modern period, which took place also in Europe.
References
- 1 2 MTSU Center for Historic Preservation (December 2016), Snelson-Brinker House: Historic Structure Report, p. 7.
- 1 2 MTSU (2016), p. 6.
- 1 2 Frazier, Harriet C. (2001). Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865 . McFarland. p. 170. ISBN 9780786409778.
- 1 2 MTSU (2016), p. 8.
- ↑ The Courts, Crawford County Missouri History. Retrieved November 25, 2017.