Mary (died August 11, 1838) was a teenage American slave who was hanged for the murder of Vienna Brinker, a two-year-old girl she was babysitting.
In February 1837, the family and their slaves moved into what would become known as the Snelson-Brinker House, a single-story log cabin near Steelville.
John Brinker gathered two of his neighbors, William Blackwell and Thomas Shirley, to help search for his daughter.
She subsequently admitted to throwing Vienna in the stream and then beating her body with a stick to stop it surfacing.
The presiding judge, Mathias McGirk, reversed the decision of the Crawford County circuit court, citing numerous irregularities in both her indictment and the trial process.
[5] Contemporary newspapers reported Mary's age as either 13 or 14, while a later account in a history of Crawford County gave it as 16.