Preliminary findings

As with WEB data, the Espy papers and his cited resources are used first. The resources below are additional sources of interest that visitors of the website might find of interest. For a list of all resources, see WEB.

June (Jane? The name is still debated) Champion The first woman to be executed in what would be become the United States in 1632

• See A Manual for the Publick Gaol by Collier C. Harris as part of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series - 1628 at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, page 43

Alse Young was the first woman to be executed for witchcraft in Connecticut and perhaps in New England overall (1647)

• Hall, David. Witch-hunting in Seventeenth Century New England: A documentary history 1638-1693 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991)

Mary Barnes and Elizabeth Greensmith were the last to be executed for witchcraft in Connecticut 

Alice Bishop, in 1648, was the first and only woman to be hanged in Plymouth Colony, MA

Margaret Jones was the first woman to be executed for witchcraft in MA in 1648

• Winthrop, John. History of New England from 1630-1649. Little Brown & Company, 1853

• Hale, John. Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft. B. Green, and J. Allen, 1702 

Catherine Bevan was (supposedly) the last public execution by burning in 1731 

• Walker, S. (1998). Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice. Oxford University Press

Sarah Simpson and Penelope Kenney became the first two persons executed in New Hampshire in 1739

Eve (owner Peter Montague) was actually the last burning by execution in 1746 (Va. Mag., III, pp. 309-310)

Sarah Bramble was the only white person to be executed in what was New London in 1753 (for neonaticide of an "illegitimate" child).

Bathsheba Spooner was the first woman executed in American colonies by colonial citizens (rather than the British) in 1778. She was also the first woman of the highest social status to be executed. According to Ann Jones (2009) book, her execution might have ended the practice of treating all infanticides as "worse than murder."

• Paige Robinson, L. (1883). History of Hardwick, Massachusetts: With a Genealogical Register Houghton, Mifflin, p. 757

Rachel Wall, in 1789, was the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts. 

Susanna Cox, in 1809, was the last woman to be publicly hanged in Massachusetts due to  overall public empathy for her plight.

"Unnamed" though the first person to be hanged in Christian County in 1812 was a young black girl, potentially innocent, of neonaticide, she is unnamed. 

First person to be executed in Clay County, MO was a black woman, Annice, for the murder of her children. Espy card

Catherine Cashier, along with James Johnson, were the last New York public executions in May 7, 1829

Mary Andrews was the first and maybe ONLY *white* woman to be executed in Missouri in 1834

• Young, W. (1910). Young’s history of Lafayette County, Missouri (Vol. 1). B.F. Bowen. This edition was digitized by the Missouri State Library and is available through the Missouri Digital Heritage Collection

Jane (owner Elkins), an enslaved person, becomes the first woman to be legally executed in the State of Texas where she was hanged on Friday, May 27, 1853 next to the Dallas county court house. 

• Sources: State of Texas vs. Jane, a Slave, Case #188; Terry Baker. Hangings and Lynchings in Dallas County, Texas: 1853 to 1920 (Fort Worth, Texas: Eakin Press, 2016): 1; See also the Human Rights Dallas: https://www.humanrightsdallasmaps.com/files/show/6 

Lucy, first and only execution of a woman in Galveston County, Texas in 1858

Chipita Rodriguez was the last woman (and first Hispanic woman) to be legally hanged in Texas 

Lena Miller was, in 1867, the first (known) woman to commit murder in the county of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, the first to be convicted of murder in the county, and the first person to hang in the county. Reportedly she went to her death "calmly and smoking a cigarette" see: https://paoddities.blogspot.com/2020/01/lena-miller-pioneer-murderess-of.html 

Susan Eberhard, last white woman to be executed in the state of Georgia in April 11, 1873 until 2015 with Kelly Gissendaner (note, black women were, however, executed) 

Anna Tribble, 1892, first hanging in Newberry County, South Carolina, since 1876

Virginia Christian, 1912, first woman to be electrocuted in Virginia. She was 17. See the Espy card.

Silena Gilmore in 1930 was the first (black) woman electrocuted in Alabama in 1930. (Earle Dennison was the first white woman electrocuted in Alabama in 1953-- tends to receive more attention)

Anna Marie Hahn, first woman in Ohio to die in the electric chair in 1937

Toni Jo Henry-only woman to be executed in Louisiana's electric chair in 1942

Mildred Louis James-first woman in Mississippi to be electrocuted in 1944

Betty Butler became the last woman to be executed in Ohio by electrocution in June 1954

Rhoda Bell Martin was the last pre-Furman execution in Alabama in 1957 (electrocuted) 

Karla Faye Tucker was the first woman executed in Texas (1998) since the Civil War 

Lisa Montgomery was, in 2008, the first woman executed in Indiana

Amber McLaughlin was the first openly/known transgender woman executed in the United States Missouri Set to Execute Amber McLaughlin on January 3 in First U.S. Execution of a Transgender Person | Death Penalty Information Center 

For executed Black women...Charleston stands out

Charleston is the clearest individual hotspot. It accounts for 9 of South Carolina’s 36 records, or 25%. When Charleston is considered alongside nearby Berkeley, Beaufort, Colleton, and other Lowcountry jurisdictions, a broader South Carolina coastal plantation cluster becomes apparent.

Maryland shows a concentrated southern-county pattern

Calvert County has six cases, and Anne Arundel has three. Other Maryland records appear in St. Mary’s, Charles/Port Tobacco, Prince George’s, Dorchester, Somerset, and Queen Anne’s. This suggests a concentration in southern Maryland and the Chesapeake plantation region, rather than an even distribution across the state.

Virginia is widespread rather than dominated by one county

Virginia has by far the most cases, but no single county dominates. The records are distributed among numerous eastern and central counties, including Brunswick, Caroline, Chesterfield, Essex, Southampton, York, Dinwiddie, Cumberland, Prince Edward, and Prince William. This is an important finding: Virginia’s concentration is statewide or regional, not attributable to one unusually active county. Many of the recurring Virginia counties lie in the Tidewater, Southside, and Piedmont plantation belts.

White women’s executions cluster around a limited number of colonial and urban judicial centers, whereas Black women’s executions are more broadly dispersed across the counties of the Chesapeake, plantation South, and Gulf states. The most striking concentration is in Essex and Suffolk Counties, Massachusetts. Together, they contain 31 of Massachusetts’s 42 cases, or 73.8%.Of the 223 records:

205 have an identified locality

The identified records represent approximately 115 locality-state combinations

The ten largest localities account for 77 of the 205 identified cases, or 37.6%

For Black women, the ten largest localities accounted for only about 15% of identified cases.

Colonial judicial-center pattern

The leading localities were also major colonial courts, capitals, ports, or execution centers:

• Essex County, Massachusetts: 16 cases, probably strongly influenced by the Salem-area witchcraft executions. Suffolk County, Massachusetts: 15 cases, encompassing Boston and its principal colonial court and execution infrastructure.

• Hartford, Connecticut: 8 cases, the colony’s governmental and judicial center.

• Annapolis, Maryland: 8 cases, the colonial and state capital.

• Williamsburg, Virginia: 7 cases, Virginia’s colonial capital.

• New York City: at least 9 coded as “New York,” with additional records coded as Manhattan, Queens, Kings, and Bronx.

• Philadelphia: 4 cases, plus additional executions elsewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania.

This suggests that the white-women distribution is not simply a population pattern. It is also an institutional geography of colonial courts and centralized execution sites.

The vast majority of identified cases—421 women—were executed under state jurisdiction. I added 5 women as being executed on a "naval ship." Only two women were executed under Spanish jurisdiction: Maria Francisca and Maria Josefa, both in 1779 in New Mexico. In Josefa’s case, the killing of her husband was reportedly carried out at the urging of her daughter. Given the relatively small number of women represented in the dataset, I have also elected to include the two executions carried out under federal authority as well as the single execution categorized as “military,” in order to present the most complete accounting possible.  Moreover, jurisdiction is not a priority at the moment so I cannot be sure about the accuracy of the above until I have completed the coding.