Rachel of Kittery, Maine (died 1695) was an African-American enslaved woman in the New England state of Maine, who was murdered by her enslaver, Nathaniel Keen, who was subsequently put on trial on for murder. The trial established court precedent in the New England colonies for how juries ruled on murder cases that involved the slave owner murdering an enslaved individual. The only documentation that she existed is several paragraphs in the Province and Court Records of Maine. She was called Rachel and lived in the town of Kittery in York County, Maine. Rachel was a slave, who was owned and beaten to death by Nathaniel Keen in late 1694 or early 1695. Trial Nathaniel Keen was arrested and charged with the murder of Rachel on or about May 1, 1695 with the trial being held on May 16, 1695. "Superior Court held at Kittery for York County, present Thomas Danforth, Elisha Cook, and Samuel Sewall, justices." Sewall was a strong advocate for the rights of slaves. "Sewall, who was probably a slaveholder himself, had first felt misgivings about the practice one day in June 1700…" Sewall went as far as to argue in his book The Selling of Joseph, published in 1700, that New England should do away with the practice of slavery. "But this view could not have been very widespread, for the anti-slavery ranks in Massachusetts at that time were represented wholly by Samuel Sewall." Rachel's murder and the subsequent trial of Nathaniel Keen had a direct impact on Sewall embracing an abolitionist position with regards to slavery. "The case was committed to the jury, who bring in their verdict; they find Nathaniel Keen guilty of cruelty to his negro woman (Rachel) by cruel beating and hard usage." The case of the murder of Rachel was according to Lorenzo Greene "a test case", which in more modern legal terminology, the case of Rachel's murder was precedent setting. Unfortunately, the precedent was to find the defendant guilty of cruelty rather than the original charge of murder and to the value of the life of a slave was five pounds and additional court costs. Defendant Nathaniel Keen acquired one hundred acres of land near Kittery, Maine in 1687 and an additional one hundred acres in 1691. Keen married Sarah Greene in 1688 and was survived by seven children based on the number of listed inheritors in Keen's will. Keen's