Margaret Garner (b. June 4, 1833-d. 1858) was born after the rape of her black slave mother by white slave master to the Gaines family of Maplewood Plantation, Boone County, Kentucky; she may have been the daughter of the plantation owner John Pollard Gaines. Also known as Peggy, she married fellow slave, Robert Garner, in 1849 while working for a new owner, Archibald K. Gaines, and his family. By 1856, the Garners 4 children, three may have been the children of Archibald Gaines.
In January 1856, Garner and her family, along with several other slave families, escaped to the safe house of Elijah Kite in Ohio. Garner made the decision to kill her 2-year-old daughter rather than return her to slavery. Garner wounded her three other children and herself when federal marshals arrested the group. She was immediately placed in prison. Abolitionist and lawyer John Jolliffe asked that Garner be tried for murder, which would have set a civil rights precedent but Garner was indicted on charges of damage of property. Lucy Stone advocated for Margaret at trial. The Garners were not sentenced to death but rather sent back to their slavery. She died in 1858 of typhoid fever.
Garner is the subject of several pieces of literature, most notably the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987). An opera, Margaret Garner, was written in 2005.
