Celia, A Slave

The historical record reveals more about Robert Newsom and his family than it does about his slave, Celia.  Robert Newsom emigrated to Missouri from Virginia with his wife and two young children sometime around 1819. He was one of many settlers who had a hand in creating Callaway County and became prosperous as a slaveholding farmer, maintaining a comfortable middle-class existence for himself and his family.  By 1855, the year he was killed, he had assets worth nearly $5000.  He was a widower, his wife had been dead for about six years, and his two daughters ran his household. 

Virginia, Newsom’s older daughter, had married a man named Waynescot, but for reasons unknown—perhaps Waynescot died—Virginia had returned home to live with her father and her four children, James Coffee, Thomas, Amelia, and Billy.  Newsom’s younger daughter, Mary, was about the same age as Celia and had not yet married.  Both of Newsom’s sons, Harry and David, were married and lived on their own farms nearby.  All of Newsom’s children were involved in the search for him when he went missing and later, after Celia confessed to his murder, for his remains.  After Celia is charged with murder and taken to jail to await her trial, the Newsom family does not play a significant role in the story, though Virginia and her son Coffee testify at Celia’s trial, and Harry demands that a St. Louis newspaper print a correction when they erroneously report that Newsom’s murder happened in the family’s kitchen, rather than in Celia’s cabin.

The evidence indicates that Newsom purchased Celia with the intent to use her for sex: he raped her before the two even arrived home after her purchase and then installed her in a private cabin near the house, isolated from the other slaves and from the Newsom family. Though her official role was that of cook, Newsom continued to visit her cabin for sex, impregnating Celia two, possibly three, times.

George was a slave on Newsom’s farm who began a relationship with Celia some time before Newsom’s death.  When Celia became pregnant for the third time and it was unclear whether George or Newsom was the father, George demanded that Celia break off her relations with Newsom, saying that he would leave her if she did not.  Celia attempted to convince Newsom to leave her alone because of illness and pregnancy, even pleading to his daughters for help.  The next time he visited Celia’s cabin, she killed him.

It is clear that the family suspected that George had something to do with Newsom’s death, but Celia consistently maintained that she alone was responsible.  Rather than depend on Celia’s word for his life, George escaped from the farm, apparently successfully since we do not learn of his recapture.  As McLaurin notes, George is the catalyst for the series of events that lead to Celia’s hanging, as his ultimatum places her in the impossible position of having to refuse a man who literally owns her.

John Jameson, Nathan Chapman Kouns, and Isaac Boulware are the men who make up Celia’s team of defense attorneys.  Judging from their defense of Celia, their appeal of the guilty verdict she received in Judge Hall’s courtroom, and their knowledge of her “escape” from jail before the first scheduled date of execution to give the Missouri Supreme Court sufficient time to read and rule on her appeal, all three men believe their client is morally innocent of the crime of murder.  John Jameson in particular is presented as a foil to Robert Newsom: the men are alike in social and economic standing and are both slave owners, and yet Jameson ends up as Celia’s last hope.  At the end of the first chapter, McLaurin suggests that Jameson is the true “pillar of the community” that he seems to be (13), and that Newsom is not, leading us to question how it is that two men so alike in surface ways can be so different underneath.