State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave

State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave was an 1855 murder trial held in the Circuit Court of Callaway County, Missouri, in which an enslaved woman named Celia was tried for the first-degree murder of her owner, Robert Newsom. Celia was convicted by a jury of twelve white men and sentenced to death. An appeal of the conviction was denied by the Supreme Court of Missouri in December 1855, and Celia was hanged for her crime on December 21, 1855.

Sometime around 1819, Robert Newsom left his home state of Virginia and traveled west, eventually settling in Callaway County, Missouri with his wife and children. By 1850, Newsom had established himself as a prosperous man in his new home, where he owned eight hundred acres of land, a successful farm, and five male slaves. Newsom's wife died sometime in 1849, and, less than a year later in 1850, Newsom travelled to Audrain County to purchase Celia, his first female slave. It is likely that Newsom raped the then fourteen-year-old Celia for the first time on the journey from Audrain County back to Callaway County. Back on Newsom's property in Callaway County, Celia was given her own cabin, about fifty feet away from the main house, where she lived separately from Newsom's male slaves. Between 1850 and 1855, Newsom regularly forced Celia to have sexual intercourse with him, and Celia bore two children over the course of those five years, at least one of which was fathered by Newsom. At some point before 1855, Celia began a romantic relationship with George, one of Newsom’s other slaves. In 1855, Celia was pregnant for a third time with a child that was likely fathered by either George or Newsom. At some point, George gave Celia an ultimatum, telling her “he would have nothing more to do with her if she did not quit the old man." After this, Celia attempted to plead with Newsom’s family members and with Newsom himself. Sometime on or around June 23, 1855, Celia begged Newsom to leave her alone because she was sick and pregnant. Newsom refused, and told her “he was coming down to her cabin that night.” Celia threatened Newsom, telling him that she would hurt him if he tried to rape her again. After her conversation with Newsom, Celia went and found a large stick, which she placed in the corner of her cabin.

On the night of June 23, 1855, after the rest of his family had gone to bed, Robert Newsom came to Celia’s cabin, as he had told her he would. Celia made an attempt to reject his sexual advances, and when he refused to back down, she clubbed him over the head with the stick that she had brought into her cabin earlier that day. After she hit him the first time, he reached out his arms as if he was trying to grab her and she clubbed him a second time, killing him. She then moved his body into her fireplace and spent the rest of the night burning his remains. She crushed some of Newsom’s smaller bones with a rock, and hid the bones that were too big to crush “under the hearth, and under the floor between a sleeper and the fire-place.” The next morning, Celia enlisted the help of Newsom’s grandson, twelve-year-old Coffee Wainscott, in scattering the ashes of Robert Newsom. According to Coffee’s testimony, Celia told him “she would give [him] two dozen walnuts if [he] would carry the ashes out.”

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