History Commons^™

Hanging Ebenezer Ball, William L. Welch

Maine History

Ebenezer Ball of Robbinston was the first man hanged for murder in Eastern Maine. A native of Massachusetts proper, he had drifted “downeast,” and become part of a lawless culture endemic to Maine’s borderlands in the early nineteenth century. Suspected of counterfeiting and confronted by authority ,he retreated to the woods, and a lawman died at his hands. Although he might have fled, he stayed, and was tried, convicted, and executed for murder in 1811. Ball’s case is seminal, since it gives us insight into the workings of the criminal justice system in Maine in the years prior to statehood. …