History records that Rachel Wall was the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts, and legend remembers her as the only woman pirate from Boston. Her highly publicized trial took place as America implemented its new constitutional government. The state attorney general who prosecuted her had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A few weeks after the trial, the presiding judge became one of the first US Supreme Court justices, and her defense attorney, who had helped ratify the constitution, soon became the first US Attorney for Massachusetts under the constitution. Not only that, but her death warrant carried perhaps the most famous signature in US history, that of governor John Hancock. On this week’s episode, we uncover the fascinating true story of Rachel Wall’s life, trial, and death that’s hiding within the legend.
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The Dread Pirate Rachel
- A transcript of the Life, Last Words, and Dying Confession of Rachel Wall.
- A 1905 examination of the Rachel Wall case by the Massachusetts Historical Society.
- Alan Rogers explains the Rachel Wall case while writing about the death penalty in the first two decades of the Massachusetts Constitution.
- The 1711 act for suppressing robberies and assaults, the 1784 act for the punishment of robbery, and an 1805 act for punishing and preventing larceny and robbery (see section 7 for the lesser penalty for assault and attempted robbery).
- The legend of Rachel Wall the pirate is forged in Piracy, Mutiny, and Murder, by Edward Rowe Snow.
- Rachel Wall in Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World, by Jane Yolen.
- Rachel Wall in Women Pirates: Eight Stories of Adventure, by Myra Weatherly.
- Amy Berkley debunks the legend of Rachel Wall, the pirate.
Boston Book Club
Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days is a slim volume of memoir by Annie L Burton, published in 1909. It has an opening passage that can be off-putting for the modern reader, recalling “happy, carefree childhood days on the plantation.” However, the book isn’t the whitewashing that the first sentence indicates. Burton was enslaved on a plantation in Alabama, and her earliest memories were formed during the Civil War years. While she says that the whites were too preoccupied with the war to pay much mind to her and her playmates, Burton recalls whippings given for stealing enough food to last until the next ration day, wives being sold down the river when they didn’t produce a child within a year of their wedding day, and lynchings in the town square.
The arc of Burton’s life after the war brought her to the Boston area multiple times, and gives insight into a time of transition for formerly enslaved people in both the South and the North. In 1879, she was visiting Memphis, and she happened to read a help wanted ad placed by a white Newton family in need of a cook. She answered the ad, got hired, and on June 15, 1879 she stepped off a train in Boston’s Old Colony Station before making her way to the family’s home in Newtonville. As we’ll hear in a few minutes, the Dread Pirate Rachel Wall also spent time as a domestic servant in the Boston area, so it’s interesting to contrast their experiences, which took place about a century apart.
Burton spent about five years working in the households of the Boston area’s wealthy white residents, moving to Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and eventually Wellesley. A death in the family took her back to the South, and after that she moved to Jacksonville, Florida for a while, where she opened a restaurant and claims to have introduced Boston Baked Beans to the Southern palate. Eventually, she found her way back to Boston and opened a restaurant here, which she says was right across from the Providence depot. The book ends abruptly in 1909, as she was getting ready to publish, when she describes opening a lodging house with her husband, but losing money on it.
It’s an amazing account by an author who remembered the experience of being enslaved, took a chance by migrating to the North, and eventually thrived as an entrepreneur in our city. The book is available as a free download on the internet archive.
Upcoming Event
On September 11, Lori Rogers-Stokes will be giving a talk called Who Were The Puritans, Who Did They Become, and What Do They Mean To Us Today? Your humble hosts have attended lectures by Dr. Rogers-Stokes about Puritan views on sex and marriage, debunking myths about the Puritans, and how the public statements of faith Puritan women made when they officially joined the church reveal their complex inner lives. We can’t think of a better local speaker to explain who the Puritans were.
The talk is part of the annual Charter Day celebration by the Partnership of Historic Bostons. The Partnership is a local group focusing on the historical relationship between Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire. Charter Day is celebrated on September 7, commemorating the day in 1630 when Boston, Dorchester, and Watertown were all officially named. The partnership has a series of lectures and walking tours throughout September and October as part of their celebration. Here’s how they describe this one:
The Puritans were, in their own day, nothing—a small group with no political power, easily driven from their own land into an America dominated by other powers, both Native and European. Yet they became a lightning rod for later generations, representing all that is good and bad in the American story. We will trace who the Puritans were when they arrived here, who they became, and what they left for following generations. What did the Puritans want New England to be? What ideas did they bring with them, and what ideas did they develop as a result of their experiences here?
The talk will be held in the Rabb lecture hall at the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library. It will begin at 6pm on Wednesday, September 11. There’s no admission fee, but they do require advanced registration, and you have to have a library card.