Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Death by burning" in English language version.
In his diary entry on Sept. 22, 1681, Increase Mather - father of the legendary clergyman Cotton Mather and later a president of Harvard College - wrote of "a negro woman who burnt 2 houses at Roxbury July 12." The woman, Maria, described as a servant - often a euphemism for a slave at the time - of Joshua Lambe, was convicted of arson for using a hot coal to set fire to the house of a local doctor and Lambe's home...Beginning with Maria's execution and ending with the last known woman burned at the stake - which, according to the Espy File on U.S. executions from 1608 to 2002, was a Black woman in North Carolina in 1805 - the overwhelming majority of women to face the fatal fires of justice, 87 percent, were Black.
