State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave
1855 murder trial in the United States
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 enslaver, 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 on December 21, 1855.
At the request of her descendants, Celia was posthumously pardoned by Governor Mike Parson on December 20, 2024.
Background
Sometime around 1819, Robert Newsom left his home state of Virginia and traveled west and eventually settled in Callaway County, Missouri, with his wife and children. By 1850, Newsom considered himself a prosperous man in his new home, where he owned eight hundred acres of land and enslaved five men. Newsom's wife died sometime in 1849, and, less than a year later in 1850, Newsom travelled to Audrain County to purchase Celia, the first girl to be enslaved on his plantation. It is likely that Newsom raped the 14-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 lived only about fifty feet away from the main house and separately from the enslaved men.
The public source identifies “State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave” as 1855 murder trial in the United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around State, Missouri and Celia.
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This entry incorporates text from “State of Missouri v. Celia, a Slave” 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.