April 26, 1844 - 16 year old Rosanne Keen, an African American domestic servant, was hanged in New Jersey for murder.

Rosanne Keen

New Jersey hanged  16-year-old Rosanne Keen for poisoning her owner Enos Seeley. Young Keen reportedly used arsenic borrowed from a neighbor that she mixed with butter and served to Seeley.

He succumbed to the poison but authorities believed Seeley died of natural causes. It was only when a neighbor revealed that she had given the poison to young Keen that suspicions escalated and officials exhumed Seeley's body.

A laboratory analysis confirmed Seeley had died from arsenic poisoning, and officials tried, convicted, and sentenced Keen to death for the murder.

Local authorities hanged Keen in a jail yard in April 1844 altough she was reportedly "deficient in intellect".

(Streib & Sametz, 1989, pp. 17-18).