Rachel Wall, nee Schmidt, was the first woman born in the American Colonies to take up a career in piracy. She also holds the distinction of being the last woman hanged in Boston. Ironically, she was not executed for her depredations as a pirate, but for stealing a hat.

A Farm Girl Who Yearned for the Sea

Rachel Wall was born in 1760 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania Colony, into a family of devout Presbyterian farmers. She was never happy with life on the farm, though. Instead, the sea called out to her, and she liked to spend as much time as possible on the waterfront. Waterfronts are often, and Rachel was attacked there by a group of girls when she was sixteen. Luckily, a sailor named George Wall came to her rescue. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t good luck.

Considering the path he led her down, a beating might have been better than crossing paths with Wall. They fell in love, and despite Rachel’s family’s objections, she married George and moved to Boston. There, she got a job as a maid, while her husband did stints on merchant ships and fishing vessels. Rachel and George befriended other sailors and their lovers, who all yearned for a life on the seas. George got his hands on a schooner in 1781, and he and Rachel talked their friends into becoming pirates.

Luring and Preying on Good Samaritans

George and Rachel Wall’s first foray into piracy was a success. They cruised New England’s sea lanes after storms, pretending to be a ship in distress, battered by the bad weather. To make the ruse even more effective and realistic, Rachel would cry out for help to passing vessels. Good Samaritans who stopped to help had their ship boarded and seized, and all aboard were robbed and murdered. Rachel and her companions captured twelve vessels within a few months, and murdered dozens of sailors. That robbed about six thousand dollars in cash, plus thousands more worth of looted goods.

Their depredations on the high seas came to an end in 1782, when a navigational error got them shipwrecked. George Wall was drowned, but Rachel and some of the other pirates survived. Piracy is difficult without a pirate ship, so the surviving pirates dispersed and went back to their previous occupations. Rachel went back to being a maid. She continued to dabble in crime, however, and became notorious for stealing in Boston Harbor. That earned her numerous convictions for petty theft and larceny. Her criminal career finally came to an end in 1789, when she stole from the wrong person.

Rachel Wall Was America’s First Female Pirate, and Massachusetts’ Last Executed Female

Rachel Wall had habitually preyed on sailors and other lower class people around Boston’s waterfront. Back then, even more so than today, the authorities did not get too worked up if crime victims were poor. Wealthy and elite crime victims, though? That’s when the law comes crashing down on culprits like a ton of bricks. Rachel found that out the hard way. On March 18^th, 1789, she saw a seventeen-year-old year old rich girl wearing an expensive, pretty. She had to have it. So Rachel rushed over, punched her in the mouth, threw her to the ground, grabbed her hat, and took off. However, passersby gave chase, caught her, and handed her over to the authorities.

Rachel was charged with robbery, but requested she be charged with piracy instead. She confessed to her piratical career of 1781-1782, but denied that she had personally killed anybody. She was tried for highway robbery for the 1789 assault and carrying off of a hat, convicted, and sentenced to death. On October 9^th, 1789, Rachel Wall ascended a gallows erected in the Boston Commons. That day, she earned the dubious distinction of becoming the last woman to ever be hanged in Massachusetts. Her last words before the trapdoor was released were: “into the hands of the Almighty God I commit my soul, relying on his mercy, and die an unworthy member of the Presbyterian Church, in the 29th year of my age”.

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Some Sources & Further Reading

Eighteenth Century, Vol. 53, No. 3. (Fall 2012) – The Pirate’s Breasts: Criminal Women and the Meanings of the Body

History Halls – Fighting Women: Fearsome French Buccaneer Anne Dieu-le-Veut

Yolen, Jane – Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World (2008)

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