Biography
William Smith was a Black seaman executed in Chatham County, Georgia, on September 8, 1810. The Espy execution chronology classifies his offense as aiding a runaway slave; Georgia execution records describe the prosecution as slave stealing involving an enslaved woman and her child. The surviving summary does not preserve their names, the circumstances of their attempted escape, or Smith’s stated motive. It does establish that Georgia used capital punishment against a Black seaman accused of helping remove two people from slavery.
