Murder at the Manhattan Well: The Personal and the Political in the Election of 1800

In 1800, journeyman carpenter, Levi Weeks, was accused of murdering Guliema Sands, a young woman living in the same boarding house. Using the trial transcript, this paper places the lives of Weeks and Sands in a larger context: Weeks as an artisan in a dynamic economy and Sands as a poor unattached woman amidst changing ideas about sexuality. The author also relates the trial to the New York election that occurred a month later.