Initially charged and acquitted of the murder of her ex-husband, she was later sentenced to Philadelphia's Walnut Street Prison for a plot to kidnap Pennsylvania Governor Simon Snyder.
[1][2][3] Born Ann Baker in about 1785, she was married off at about age 15 to the much older Captain John Carson due to the financial distress of her parents.
Carson then planned to kidnap the governor in July 1816, Simon Snyder, aiming to threaten to kill him if he didn't pardon Smith.
On the night of the attempted kidnapping, July 10, 1816, a relative of Smith was able to get word to John Binns, editor of the Democratic Press, who conveyed the plot to the Governor at his home in Selinsgrove, who then fled to Harrisburg.
[13] Branson later published the book Dangerous to Know: Women, Crime, and Notoriety in the Early Republic (2008, University of Pennsylvania Press: ISBN 978-0812240887) about Carson and her ghostwriter and biographer Mary Clarke.