On August 23, 1828, Annice became the first enslaved woman known to be executed in Missouri. She was hanged for the murder of five children—including two of her own—whom she drowned in a desperate act of defiance against slavery. Her case is one of many instances where enslaved women, faced with the horrors of bondage, turned to infanticide as a means of resisting a system that saw their children as property rather than human beings.
Infanticide as a Form of Resistance
Infanticide among enslaved women was not an isolated occurrence. Throughout the era of American slavery, many enslaved mothers killed their children rather than allow them to endure the lifelong torment of bondage. Historian Walter Johnson notes that the interstate slave trade frequently destroyed families, with 50% of trades dissolving a family unit and 25% severing a first marriage. Many of these trades separated children under 13 from their parents, leading to a sense of helplessness and despair. Given that enslaved children were often taken from their mothers and sold to faraway plantations, some mothers saw death as a preferable fate to a life of endless suffering.
The most well-known example of such an act was Margaret Garner, who, in 1856, killed one of her children and attempted to kill others rather than see them returned to slavery. Annice’s case predates Garner’s by nearly three decades, demonstrating that this form of resistance had long been practiced among enslaved African women facing impossible choices.
Annice’s Crime and Execution
Annice was owned by Jeremiah Prior of Clay County, Missouri. On July 27, 1828, she was indicted for the murder of her two children, Billy (5) and Nancy (2), as well as three other enslaved children—Ann, Nelly, and Phebe—who were also owned by Prior. It was reported that she was caught while attempting to drown yet another child. The indictment stated that she pushed the children into a body of water “of the depth of five feet” where they “choked, suffocated and drowned, of which they instantly died.”
Annice was given a jury trial and a defense attorney, found guilty, and publicly hanged in Liberty, Missouri, the county seat. Her execution was the first recorded legal execution in Clay County and made her the first enslaved woman known to be executed in Missouri.
Some have suggested that Annice’s actions were not just acts of despair but also of resistance. By killing the children, she deprived her enslaver of five “valuable properties,” striking a blow against the system of slavery itself. Enslaved people were considered assets, and their offspring represented future labour and asset that can be sold for profit. In Missouri, as in the rest of the South, the birth of an enslaved child was a financial gain for the owner, as the child could eventually be put to work or sold. By ensuring that these children would never be subjected to slavery, Annice may have been acting as an agent of resistance against an institution that sought to reduce human lives to mere economic units.
Annice was the only enslaved person known to have been executed for infanticide in Missouri, but she was far from the only enslaved mother who took such drastic measures. The brutality of slavery meant that for many, death was seen as the only escape. While some enslaved mothers attempted to run away with their children, many knew that capture was inevitable. The punishment for attempting to escape was often torture or execution, and in many cases, enslaved women had no recourse but to take the lives of their children to spare them from a fate worse than death.
Sources:
https://archives.albany.edu/description/catalog/apap330aspace_d687a7d6e3412adcd9e3c0f07c071add
