Mark Codman
executed African-American slave
Mark (died September 18, 1755) (sometimes called Mark Codman) was a Black man enslaved by Captain John Codman (1696–1755) of Massachusetts in Charlestown, Boston 20 years before the American Revolutionary War. Though some texts refer to Mark as "Mark Codman", he was probably not referred to as such during his life, as giving an enslaved person the surname of his enslaver was not commonly done in New England. The contemporary documents from the investigation and trial only use Mark for his name.
Mark was enslaved by Codman a few years before his execution. He was accused of burning down a building to try to gain his freedom about six years before his death. Mark could read and said that he read the Bible to find a way to kill his enslaver without committing a sin. He struck upon poisoning because it did not involve the shedding of blood. According to historical documents from the investigation and judgment, Mark obtained arsenic from a doctor on the pretense it was to kill pigs but furnished it to his sister, who administered it to Codman. Several other enslaved people were also implicated in the plot.
In 1755, Mark was convicted of assisting in the successful poisoning of his enslaver, John Codman.
“Mark Codman” enters the record as executed African-American slave. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mark, Codman and executed can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q57313284. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1755 and 1696.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mark Codman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.