Timothy Meaher

Timothy Meaher (1812 – 3 March 1892) was an American slave trader, son of an Irish immigrant father, James Meaher, and an Anglo-Irish American mother, Susannah Millay [Millea]. He was one of eight children and he was raised in rural Whitefield, Maine. In 1835, Timothy and his brother James left Maine for Mobile, Alabama. In that same year, Timothy had worked on a steamboat named the Wanderer. Meaher worked on nine different ships before he owned his own steamboat and a large sawmill in the 1840s. In 1855, Timothy married Mary C. Waters. Mary C. Waters was the niece of Edward Kavanagh, who was active in local politics and briefly the Governor of Maine, 1843–1844. Meaher and three of his brothers had plantations, sawmills, timberlands, and steamboats. Meaher was a wealthy human trafficker, businessman, and landowner. He purchased the slave-ship Clotilda and was responsible for the last known slave voyage to the United States after the banning of the importation of slaves.