Ann Carson

Ann Carson (born Ann Baker) (1785–1824) was an early nineteenth-century American criminal who was described by biographers as "the most captivating beauty of the underworld and the most notorious character in the State" of Pennsylvania. Initially charged and acquitted of the murder of her ex-husband, she was later sentenced to Philadelphia's Walnut Street Prison for a plot to kidnap Pennsylvania Governor Simon Snyder. Incarcerated a second time for counterfeiting, she died of typhoid fever in the prison in 1824.

For the Canadian poet, see Ann Elizabeth Carson.

The 1822 publication of her memoir The History of the Celebrated Mrs. Ann Carson, and 1838 publication of The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson, cemented her fame.[1][2][3]

Biography

Childhood

Born Ann Baker in 1785, she was married off at age 15 to the much older Captain John Carson due to the financial distress of her parents. John Carson was a former captain in the U.S. Navy who had served with her father.[4]

Death of first husband

After leaving on a sailing trip to China, Captain Carson did not return for a number years, and was thus presumed dead. Ann took up with Lieutenant Richard Smith, and married him in October 1815. When Captain Carson showed up at home soon after the marriage, she was none too pleased. After some time of strife, Smith shot Captain Carson on an evening in January 1816, and he died from his injuries a few weeks later. At trial, Smith was convicted of murder despite a plea and some evidence of self-defense, and Ann Carson was acquitted.[5] Carson then set about trying to save Smith from execution, first pleading for a pardon, and then planned to kidnap Alderman Alexander Binns as a hostage to trade for Smith, but that plan failed. Then she planned to kidnap Binns' six-year-old son, but the plan was leaked and the boy kept home to foil the plot.

Carson then planned to kidnap the governor in July 1816, Simon Snyder, aiming to threaten to kill him if he didn't pardon Smith. She recruited two accomplices, "Lige" Brown and Henry Way, for the task. On the night of the attempted kidnapping, July 10, 1816, a relative of Smith was able to get word to John Binns, editor of the Democratic Press, who conveyed the plot to the Governor at his home in Selinsgrove, who then fled to Harrisburg. Carson was then arrested. Way escaped jail and was never caught. Smith was executed on August 10, 1816.[6][7]

Later life

Upon a release from the prison in January 1822, she resolved to write a book about her life, thinking it would be "a very saleable book," and which it proved to be.[8]

In 1823, Carson was later arrested for passing a counterfeit note,[9][10] and sentenced after a trial to seven more years in prison. She died in prison from typhoid fever on April 27, 1824, which she had gotten from nursing other sick inmates.[6]

Publications

Carson published several books, including:

  • The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson[11]
  • The History of the Celebrated Mrs. Ann Carson[12]

Historian Susan Branson conducted research into Ann Carson and her ghost writer and biographer.[13] Branson later published the book Dangerous to Know: Women, Crime, and Notoriety in the Early Republic (2008, University of Pennsylvania Press: ISBN 978-0812240887) about Carson and her ghostwriter and biographer Mary Clarke.[1][14]

References
  1. Manion, Jen (January 2010). "Manion on Branson, 'Dangerous to Know: Women, Crime, and Notoriety in the Early Republic'". H-Women. H-Net. Retrieved 23 June 2023.
  2. Carson, Ann (d. 1824), Encyclopedia.com (citing Dictionary of Women Worldwide)
  3. (16 June 2013). From the Philad. Frankling Gazette of June 14, New York Evening Post, p. 2 col 5 ("Mrs. Ann Carson, who lately escaped from the Trenton prison, has returned to it. She hurt her instep in jumping out of the second story window of the room in which she was confined, and remained but a short time in the neighborhood – She is in good spirits, and says that this adventure will aid in furnishing matter for a second volume.")
  4. 'He swore His Life was in Danger From Me': The Attempted Kidnapping of Governor Simon Snyder, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 67, No. 3, Crime in Pennsylvania (Summer 2000), pp. 349–360
  5. "The trials of Richard Smith as principal, and Ann Carson, alias Ann Smith, as accessary, for the murder of Captain John Carson, on the 20th day of January, 1816, at a court of oyer and terminer held at Philadelphia, May, 1816, by the judges of the Court of common pleas, Judge Rush ... president; together with the arguments of counsel, the charges and sentence of the president". www.archive.org. Philadelphia: Published by Thomas Desilver, 220, Market street. 1816. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  6. Godcharles, Frederic A. Daily Stories of Pennsylvania, pp. 784–86 (1924)
  7. (30 October 1816). Note (on tombstone of Smith), Rhode-Island Republican
  8. Williams, Dan. "Her Book the Only Hope She Had": Self and Sovereignty in the Narratives of Ann Carson, in Women's Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire, pp. 229–48 (Balkun, Mary McAleer & Susan C. Imbarrato, eds.) (2016)
  9. "Trial of the notorious Ann Carson, and her accomplices, before Robert Wharton, Esq., Mayor of the city of Philadelphia,: for passing counterfeit notes". www.hathitrust.org. June 1823. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  10. (8 July 1823). Counterfeiters, Portland Gazette, p. 2, col. 4
  11. Carson, Ann Baker (1838). The Memoirs of the Celebrated and Beautiful Mrs. Ann Carson: Daughter of an Officer of the U.S. Navy, and Wife of Another, Whose Life Terminated in the Philadelphia Prison. Sold at no. 167 1/2 Greenwich St. and N.E. corner of Nassau and Greenwich sts.--wholesale and retail. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  12. Carson, Ann Baker (1822). The History of the Celebrated Mrs. Ann Carson,: Widow of the Late Unfortunate Lieutenant Richard Smyth; with a Circumstantial Account of Her Conspiracy Against the Late Governor of Pennsylvania, Simon Snyder; and of Her Sufferings in the Several Prisons in that State. : Interspersed with Anecdotes of Characters Now Living. Retrieved 25 June 2023.
  13. Branson, Susan (April 2005). "An Outlaw and Her Ghost Writer: Enigmas of Female Celebrity in Early America], Commonplace". 5 (3). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. Reviews of Dangerous to Know
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