Rachel Wall is considered the first female pirate in the US and operated off the shores of New Hampshire. She was hanged in MA in 1789.
Piracy, as a whole, often relies on storytelling to create legends out of seemingly ordinary events. The tales everyone grows up hearing about Blackbeard, Davy Jones, and Captain Kidd are rooted in reality because these people actually existed, but it’s nearly impossible to say for certain how much of their stories is real and how much has been embellished over time.
In extremely rare circumstances, the line between fact and fiction becomes easier to decipher when firsthand accounts of the events are uncovered. Granted, some of these may still need to be taken with a grain of salt depending on how reliable and trustworthy the narrator is. In the case of Rachel Wall, her dying confession seems to be one rooted in honesty.
Wall is widely considered to be the first female pirate in America, and according to the New England Pirate Museum, she’s the only one who ever worked off the shores of New England. It’s a fact that Wall herself confirmed in her last words as she carefully unraveled the tale of how she fell into a life of crime to begin with. She was only 29 years old when she told that story while waiting to be hanged in Boston Common in 1789.
Whether other female pirates actually operated before her is unclear, as are many details of Wall’s life that have either been lost over time or have been transformed into something more legendary. The facts that remain are clear and simple. She was born Rachel Schmidt in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 1, 1760. She worked as a pirate alongside her husband George Wall off the coast of New Hampshire. She was put to death for a crime she claimed she didn’t commit, and she was the last woman to ever be hanged in Massachusetts.
The reality of her life between those points is foggy at best, but if there’s anything we can take away from history, it’s that the truth most often lies somewhere between what really happened and what we’re told about it decades later.
Rachel was dragged into piracy by her husband, George Wall
Rachel Schmidt was raised in a Presbyterian family in Carlisle, Pennsylvania alongside two sisters and three brothers. When she was about 16 years old, she eloped with George Wall and moved with him to Philadelphia, most likely without the consent of her parents. The newlyweds traveled from there to New York City and further north into Boston. According to Rachel’s confession, George abandoned her in Boston for a stretch of time, during which she worked as a servant.
Upon his return, George found Rachel and, in her own words, “as soon as he came back, he enticed me to leave my service, and take to bad company, from which I might date my ruin.” He wanted her to join him and the band of pirates he had been working with amid his absence from Boston. Given the limited options available to her, Rachel agreed, and the two traveled onward to New Hampshire.
The majority of Rachel’s time as a pirate seems to have taken place off the Isles of Shoals. There isn’t any physical evidence to support this other than the recollections she provided prior to her death. According to Rachel, her role was to stand on the ship’s deck and pretend to be a captive of the pirates on board. She would call out to others nearby for help, and when sailors boarded her ship to assist her, her husband and the other men would attack the sailors and plunder their vessels.
At some point, George abandoned Rachel again, and she never heard from him after that. Certain reports indicate that he died at sea, whereas others state that he simply left and his whereabouts remained unknown for the duration of Rachel’s life. Either way, she said before her death that she forgave him for everything that transpired after meeting him.
Crimes and confession
It appears as though there were only a few select instances in which Rachel herself committed crimes beyond these acts of trickery. She confessed that, “Sometime in the spring of 1787, not being able to ascertain the exact time, I happened to go on board a ship, lying at the Long-Wharf, in Boston;—the Captain’s name I cannot recollect, but think he was a Frenchman: On my entering the cabin, the door of which not being fastened, and finding the Captain and Mate asleep in their beds, I hunted about for plunder, and discovered, under the Captain’s head, a black silk handkerchief containing upwards of thirty pounds, in gold, crowns, and small change, on which I immediately seized the booty and decamped therewith as quick as possible.”
In 1788, she stole change, silver shoe buckles, and a silver watch from a sloop located at Doane’s Wharf in Kennebunk, Maine. Additionally, Rachel admitted to committing a crime that another woman, Dorothy Horn, was publicly tried and whipped for. Despite admitting to this string of thefts and the crime that Horn was punished for, Rachel never once admitted to the piracy itself.
She also maintained up until the moment of her execution that she did not commit the crime she was hanged for in 1789.
Trial and death
In the “Life, Last Words, and Dying Confession of Rachel Wall,” Rachel recounted how she had been accused of and arrested for stealing buckles, shoes, and a bonnet from Margaret Bender on March 18, 1789, in an act of highway robbery. She maintained her innocence throughout her trial, claiming to have never even seen Bender on the day in question. It’s unclear as to why she was accused in the first place, but she was convicted of the charges of highway robbery and sentenced to death.
While confined to the Boston Gaol, Rachel offloaded her conscience into the document that has been discussed throughout this recollection. It is her words that shed the most light on the true nature of her time in New Hampshire, and of how she felt about the crimes she both did and did not commit. She was hanged on Thursday, October 8, 1789, on Boston Common in front of thousands of people who came to watch that day’s execution.
In reading Rachel’s confession, it’s easy to have sympathy for the woman who was forced into piracy by a man who abandoned her with little fanfare and even fewer resources. She made the most of what she was given, and as the first known female pirate to work the waters off New Hampshire, she will always hold a special place in history because of that.
