The Execution of Richard and Maria Stewart, 1826
This first execution recorded in the local newspapers (it was perhaps the Town's second execution) was an especially horrific case. It involved a black brother and sister, Richard and Maria Stewart, convicted on the testimony of Maria's daughter, who having been sent to bed unusually early, got up to witness the birth and strangulation of her mother's newborn child by her uncle. The event was recorded in the local newspaper, the St. Andrews Herald. Unfortunately this issue is now lost, but Judge Ward Chipman Jr.'s address to the prisoners was quoted verbatim in the Eastport Sentinel. A later remark by Edtior Armstrong of the Beacon, that "The Stewart couple resided in a shanty not far from the present golf club house" puts them squarely on Cedar Lane in what was known at the time, or became later known, as Slabtown, a shantytown of blacks and poor Irish along that stretch of road. That means that Richard and Maria were probably related to the Stewarts who in the 1851 census are noted to be living along this stretch of road: Moses Stewart, John Stewart, and Charles Stewart, all heads of families who would have been in their twenties or so in 1826. That said, nothing definite is known about Richard and Maria--their ages, parents. Other black Stewarts are recorded in Anglican Church records as having died within the next decade or so at a fairly advanced age. These might have been parents. The unfortunate daughter who testified against her mother and uncle was Margaret Stewart; this is recorded in the Supreme Court of New Brunswick minutes of the case. A Margaret Stewart, girl of color, aged 18, died in St. Andrews in 1832. If this is the same girl, she would have been 12 at the time of the crime.
Richard and Maria were buried in the south-east corner of the Anglican burial ground at the head of King Street, but in a special plot set aside from regular parishioners and all after them, notes the Church's vesty book, who shall suffer the utmost rigor of the law.
- Items from Newspapers and Public Records
- See also my "Black Timeline" for other black Stewarts in St. Andrews