Accession No. RARE.2025.0041: Purchased, 2025 January
[identification of item], Indictment of Abner Meeker of Chillicothe, Ohio for Abuse and Imprisonment of a Black Woman Known as “Negro Dolly," SPEC.RARE.MMS.0406, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University
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Processed by: Casey Blackmore, 2025 June; Finding aid written by: Casey Blackmore, 2025 June.
Beginning early on in enslavement as the voyage on the Middle Passage, enslaved women received different treatment due to their gender. Enslaved women received similar treatment to their male counterparts in regard to physical labor, but they also frequently experienced sexual abuse at the hand of their enslavers who used stereotypes of black women's hypersexuality as a way to justify the abuse. Most frequently, enslaved Black women were the victims of sexual abuse and harassment. The laws of the United States both established and protected slavery, and violence against enslaved Black people and especially Black women, was often not criminalized.
Abner Meeker was an innkeeper residing in Ross County (Northwest Territory), and was charged for repeatedly abusing a Black woman "commonly known by the name of Negro Dolly." The indictment states that Meeker assaulted the woman with force and arms. It was further claimed that Meeker "did then and their unlawfully with force and arms imprison and confine and her the said Dolly there kept and detained in prison and confinement from the said first day of May until the first day of June." Dolly was allegedly one of only four hundred African Americans who lived in the Northwest Territory at that time.
United States Attorney Michael Baldwin describes Meeker's crimes as an "evil example of all others in like case offending," and a violation against "the Peace and Dignity of the United States and of this Territory." Baldwin, a native of Connecticut and Yale graduate, was positioned to assume a higher role in law enforcement, having been the brother of a United States Senator and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He traveled to the Northwest Territory in 1799 and was appointed United States Attorney for areas located northwest of the Ohio River. Baldwin led pro-statehood campaigns and ultimately help write the first draft of the Ohio Constitution.
The Indictment of Abner Meeker of Chillicothe, Ohio for Abuse and Imprisonment of a Black Woman Known as “Negro Dolly” contains an indictment issued by United States Attorney Michael Baldwin to Abner Meeker, a Chillicothe, Ohio innkeeper that was charged with beating and imprisoning a local African American woman known in the town as “Negro Dolly.” The indictment was unsusal for its time as the charge was against a white male for the abuse of an African American woman. The document is dated 1801.