Charity Lamb

Charity Lamb ( – 1879) was an American domestic violence survivor who was the first woman convicted of murder in Oregon Territory. She had traveled west from North Carolina via the Oregon Trail, before settling near Oregon City with her husband and six children. On May 13, 1854, Lamb mortally wounded her husband by striking him twice in the back of the head with an axe. Rumors, and information presented by the prosecution at trial, implicated involvement with a paramour, by Charity and possibly her teenage daughter, herself acquitted of the murder two months prior. The defense argued that her husband had a long history of domestic violence, and the murder was committed in self-defense, or out of a level of fear that rose to insanity, marking her trial as an early example of the abuse defense.

She was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor at the Oregon State Penitentiary. In 1862, she was transferred to Oregon Hospital for the Insane. She died there in 1879, and is likely buried on a corner of the property.

Early life

Charity Lamb was born in North Carolina. It is not known where, but Charity had some schooling, and could read and write. By 1850 they were living in White, Missouri with four children.

Murder of Nathaniel Lamb On May 13, 1854, while the Lamb family was seated around the table for dinner in their cabin, Charity struck her husband Nathaniel twice with an axe to the back of his head.

Nathaniel died a week later, and an autopsy was performed. Nathaniel's body was taken to the local church, which also assumed custody of the children.

Prosecution At the outset of the trial, two of the requirements for a murder charge had already largely been settled: Nathaniel had been killed, and Charity had killed him. Charity had already admitted to as much multiple times. Their child Thomas testified of events that occurred on the morning of the murder:

[Nathaniel] started to Mr. Cook's with the gun, and went a piece and came back to the gate, and put the gun to the paling, and pointed it at [Charity]. I was in the house and saw it. When Mary Ann rose up and saw him, he turned away the gun and shot it off at a big tree. However, they also appeared to be unaware of her death more than years after the fact, and so it is not clear what the reliability of this report is. Other more modern sources do not appear to recognize this report. Steve Laam,

Lamb died in 1879. The cause of death was recorded as apoplexy, likely a stroke or internal hemorrhage. She was most likely buried at the southwest corner of the Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, just to the east of the Chinese railroad workers section, where researchers believe up to 132 patients from the mental hospital were buried. However, her name did not appear in cemetery records. Around 1930, the southwest corner was paved over to allow for Multnomah County to begin building on the property.

As of 2009, the plot of landed owned by the Lambs was held as a privately owned parcel outside of Eagle Creek, Oregon. The remains of the family's cabin persisted on the land until at least 1969.