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Sketches of the life of Joseph Mountain : a Negro, who was executed at New-Haven, on the 20th day of October, 1790, for a rape, committed on the 26th day of May last : the writer of this history has directed that the money arising from the sales thereof, after deducting the expence of printing, &c. be given to the unhappy girl, whose life is rendered wretched by the crime of the malefactor
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- English
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- New-Haven : Printed and sold by T. & S. Green, [1790]
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- 1 online resource (18, 2 unnumbered pages)
- Joseph Mountain born 1758 in Philadelphia, son of a negro slave until she was 21 and a mulatto father, was the house servant of Samuel Mifflin. When he was seventeen, his master granted him permission to sail to London where he met two thieves, Francis Hyde and Thomas Wilson, and soon Mountain was acting as an accomplice to their crimes in and around London, York, and Newmarket. For a short time, Mountain worked as a ship cook, but soon returned to London and met up with a gang of highway robbers. Several years later, he married a young white woman, Nancy Allingame. He left her and, with Hyde and Wilson, resumed his former criminal activities. In 1789, he returned to America where a few days later, he was caught and whipped for stealing five dollars. Shortly after, he was arrested for rape, although Mountain claimed that the crime was assault. While waiting for his execution on October 20, 1790, he dictated this document.
- Signed: Joseph Mountain.
- Compiled by: David Daggett.
Subjects
- Mountain, Joseph, 1758-1790.
- Mountain, Joseph, 1758-1790 -- Trials, litigation, etc.
- African Americans -- Biography.
- African American criminals -- Biography.
- Crime -- Great Britain.
- Rape -- Connecticut -- New Haven -- Cases.
- Trials (Rape) -- Connecticut -- New Haven.
- Executions and executioners -- Connecticut -- New Haven.