Anna Williams (enslaved person)

Anna "Ann" Williams (born c. 1791 – d. unknown) was an enslaved woman who successfully sued for freedom for herself and her children before the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

During this period, she jumped from the third-floor window of the F Street Tavern in Washington, D.C.[6] The action became highly publicized, with Abolitionist writers sharing the story as an example of the human indignities of the slave trade.

[3] News of her fall reached Jesse Torrey, a prominent Philadelphia physician and anti-slavery writer who was gathering first-hand narratives by African Americans of slavery and kidnapping.

The chairperson of the select committee, Congressman John Randolph, subpoenaed testimony from Torrey, the two medical doctors who treated Williams - Dr. Benjamin King and Dr. W. Jones, and from attorney Francis Scott Key who had been gathering evidence of kidnappings related to the interstate slave trade.

[9] In 1835, Williams was interviewed and shared her story with Ethan Allen Andrews when he was writing his forthcoming book, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States.