Narrative of the Three Eyewitness Accounts of Death at the Gallows

DateJuly 25 1835

Event TypeNarrative

DescriptionIn this letter, Nicholas Boss writes in response to Johnson’s inquiry about gallows which stood on Easton’s Beach. According to two eyewitnesses, at least three individuals were executed there. The first a man named John Shearman, convicted of burglary, the second, Fortune, an enslaved African convicted of setting fire to a warehouse on Long Wharf. Both crimes are independently documented in contemporary accounts in the Newport Mercury. The third execution was a Native American woman named Nanny, who was convicted of killing a young girl and throwing her in a well. This account could not be verified through other sources. The last two statements were those of a Peggy, a "very respectable black woman, of the Easton Family."