Biography
James Madison, Sr, was the son of Ambrose Madison and his wife Frances Taylor, and was born in 1723 in Orange County, Virginia. When he was nine, his family moved to their new plantation of Mount Pleasant in 1732. His father had hired slaves and an overseer to clear it, work that had been going on for five years to establish cultivation. That summer his father died at age 36 in August after a short illness.
The family or the sheriff believed he was poisoned by slaves, and three were charged in the case and convicted by justices of the Commission of Peace. Unusually, only one slave was executed; Dido and Turk, owned by the widow Frances Taylor Madison, were returned to her to serve as laborers after being punished by whipping.
James was tutored and trained to be a planter and slaveholder, and member of the landed gentry. His widowed mother never remarried, which was unusual at that time for a woman her age; she had extensive Taylor family in the county. As the eldest son, Madison inherited Mount Pleasant when he came of age in 1744. He called the plantation Home House. Acquiring more land, he eventually owned 5,000 acres, making him the largest landowner in Orange County. By the time of his death, he owned 108 slaves.
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