Letter to R.M. Johnson from Nicholas Boss responding to Johnson inquiry about a 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 African slave 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.