By Marilyn Bauer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Margaret Garner is believed to have worked in this cookhouse on the Boone County farm once owned by Archibald K. Gaines. Enquirer file/PATRICK REDDY

The story of Margaret Garner begins on the Maplewood Plantation in Richwood Station, Ky., 16 miles south of Covington. On Jan. 27, 1856, at 10 p.m., 22-year-old Garner, her husband, their children and his parents stole a sleigh and horses from their masters and rode to the Ohio River where they crossed over on foot to freedom.

Hidden by relatives in a cabin in Cincinnati, the Garners didn't realize their owners, Archibald K. Gaines and Thomas Marshall, were in pursuit. After obtaining a warrant and enlisting the help of federal marshals, the men surrounded the cabin and broke down the door.

The Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Jan. 29, 1856, described the scene:

"In one corner of the room was a negro child bleeding to death. His [sic] throat was cut from ear to ear, and the blood was spouting out profusely, showing that the deed was but recently committed. Scarcely was this fact noticed, when a scream issuing from an adjoining room drew their attention thither. A glance into the apartment revealed a negro woman holding in her hand a knife literally dripping with gore over the heads of two little negro children, who were crouched to the floor ... They were discovered to be cut across the head and shoulders, but not seriously injured, although the blood trickled down their backs ... The negress avowed herself the mother of the children, and said that she had killed one, and would like to kill the three others rather than see them again reduced to slavery."

Garner took up a shovel and slammed it down on her infant daughter who was lying on the floor. She was overpowered by the men and dragged away with the rest of her family.

According to Steven Weisenburger, author of Modern Medea: A Family Story of Slavery and Child Murder from the Old South, Gaines entered the cabin and, crying over the body of 3-year-old Mary, refused to release it to coroners. Officials wanted to bury her in Cincinnati but Gaines insisted she be shipped to Kentucky for burial. It was rumored he was the baby's father.

"In those behaviors I find pretty compelling evidence that there was some kind of special relation between Gaines and the little girl," Weisenburger told the Associated Press upon the release of his book.

The Garners were put on a riverboat heading for the slave market in Natchez, Miss. On March 10, the Henry Lewis hit another vessel and sank. Margaret Garner was rescued but the infant daughter she once battered with a shovel drowned. Garner was said to have been happy for the death. Two years later the woman whose story would inspire Toni Morrison to write Beloved (made into a 1998 movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey) would die of typhoid fever.