• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Jun 15 2018, 16:05:25 UTC

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/39402084/timothy-meaher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Meaher

Timothy Meaher (1812 – 3 March 1892) was a wealthy 19th-century slave trader, businessman and landowner. He owned the slave-ship Clotilda. He was responsible for the last illegal transport of slaves from Africa to the United States in 1860.

Note: National Geographic History magazine (NOV./DEC. 2019) includes an article entitled "CLOTILDA THE LAST AMERICAN SLAVE SHIP"

Slave trade

The illegal capturing and transporting of slaves was made as a bet to see if Meaher could avoid the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Meaher reportedly described the bet as "a thousand dollars that inside two years I myself can bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." Meaher sold some of the slaves, but took the rest to work for his brother James and himself. Meaher burned the ship to try and hide the evidence of his lawbreaking.

The slaves were freed in 1865, but Timothy Meaher refused to help them return home or provide reparations. He sold them some land where they created the slave colony of Africatown. The United States government attempted to charge Meaher, but due to factors such as difficulty proving the crime and the Civil War, he was never prosecuted. However in 1890, two years before his death, Meaher bragged in a newspaper interview about his slave trading.

Death and legacy

Timothy Meaher died on 3 March 1892 in Mobile, Alabama. He is buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Toulminville, Alabama. The Meaher family is still prominent in Alabama, with Meaher State Park bearing the name, as well as a Meaher Avenue running through Africatown. The family have refused to make any statement "about their ancestor’s crime" or release his personal papers.