It’s Black History Month, and each week we’ll be exploring a different facet of black history in Washington Square Park. This week we’re remembering Rose Butler, a slave who was executed in the potter’s field that eventually became WSP.

On March 5th, 1818, the land that we now call Washington Square Park — then a potter’s field— was witness to its only recorded execution in history; that of a 19-year old black woman named Rose Butler. 

Rose was born in Mount Pleasant New York in November 1799. But for unknown reasons, Rose was still a slave. She was owned by various households before coming to New York City under the ownership of a man named Abraham Child. In 1817 she was sold to William Morris and his family…and just a year later she was on trial, accused of attempting to burn down the Morris family home while they slept. During the trial, Rose admitted to intentionally causing the fire and tying a string to the kitchen door to prevent the family from escaping. Although there were no reported casualties, and the physical damage was limited to a few kitchen steps, Rose was still convicted of arson and sentenced to death. 

In a densely packed, highly flammable city like NYC, arson was considered a heinous crime. In fact, the fear of fire was so great that in 1808 New York State added residential arson to its list of capital crimes. That designation actually drove Rose’s case all the way to New York’s Supreme Court. There they debated whether arson was truly a capital offence worthy of the death penalty, or a common law offence, which commanded a prison sentence. Sadly for Rose, the Supreme Court ruled that her actions constituted first-degree arson, and upheld her death sentence. She was incarcerated for a short time at Bridewell Prison before being hanged from a gallows erected in the potter’s field specifically for this purpose. 

At the time of Rose’s execution, New York was in the throes of a complex period of gradual emancipation that began in 1781 when the state legislature voted to free slaves who had fought during the Revolutionary War. By the time Rose was born, the African Free School had been established in NYC to educate both enslaved and free children. And by 1790, one in three black New Yorkers was free. But the progress toward full-freedom was stilted, and the New York legislature took measures to essentially redefine indentured servitude in a way that allowed for slavery to continue. It was too important to the economic stability of New York City and its agricultural areas.   

In fact, Rose herself should not have been a slave. In 1799 New York passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery that declared children born after July 4th, 1799 to enslaved mothers would be born free, with the caveat that they would be required to provide free services for their mother’s masters until they turned 25 (for women) or 28 (for men). It also reclassified existing slaves as indentured servants, who could not be sold but were required to continue their unpaid labor. Rose was born in November 1799, but her mother’s status is unknown. But even if she was a slave, Rose should have been free except for the requirement to work for her mother’s master, who wasn’t William Morris. In March of 1817 New York passed another abolition law to free those born before 1799 under the same conditions of the Gradual Abolition of Slavery act, so again Rose should have had her freedom. 

But for whatever reason, Rose remained a slave; A slave who was a stonesthrow from freedom, not just legally but physically as well. Just a short walk from the Morris home, free, indentured, and enslaved blacks intermingled in an ever-developing Greenwich Village. It was a time when urban development was pushing the city further north into formerly more rural areas — like the neighborhood around modern-day Washington Square Park. This created a shift in geographical and social boundaries, and allowed for the development of neighborhoods like “Little Africa,” a rapidly growing free black neighborhood centered around what is now Minetta Street, just below the potter’s field. So while Rose’s status as a slave was not necessarily unusual for the time, she would have been surrounded by examples of what free life could be like. It’s unclear whether the lure of freedom is what spurred Rose to action on that fateful evening, but to live so close to something that still seemed far out of reach must have been nearly unbearable. 

It might be that New York’s complex relationship with slavery played a role in Rose’s harsh treatment, and why her case drew such significant attention. Despite the lack of physical harm to person or property, she was still sentenced to death, in what was possibly meant to be a show of strength and a sign to white New Yorkers that they would be “protected” despite emancipation. Rose’s execution itself was carried out in an unusually public manner. There are no other recorded executions in the potter’s field to indicate that it was a common practice to hang prisoners there, which is further evidenced by the need to erect a gallows specifically for Rose. Thousands came to the potter’s field to watch the execution. Her execution seemed to serve as part warning, part lesson, to the city’s black community.  And perhaps why her death resonates so much today.

Following her execution, Rose was buried in the potter’s field, so close to the freedom she never got in life. Her execution is the only one recorded in the potter’s field, and it was just a few years later in 1825 that the potter’s field was permanently closed. In 1827, just 9 years after Rose’s execution, slavery in New York came to a definitive end. The same year Washington Square opened as a Park. So next time you come here, take a minute to remember those who have come before, and the very different lives so many of them lived.