Moving From Monticello
In October 1797, Thomas Jefferson gave Isaac, his wife Iris, and their sons Joyce and Squire to his daughter Maria and John Wayles Eppes as part of their marriage settlement. This was customary practice in those years by planters who had sufficient slave holdings. He also gave the Eppes the 14-year-old slave Betsy Hemmings, who would serve as their children's nurse and became the matriarch of the slave society at the Eppes plantation.
When Jefferson's grandson Thomas Mann Randolph needed a blacksmith, he leased Isaac from Eppes. Isaac and his young family moved from Buckingham County to the Randolph plantation of Edgehill in Albemarle County in 1798. Their daughter, Maria, was born soon after. Isaac's memoir suggests that he lived at Monticello during Jefferson's retirement years. He and his family may have been chosen to accompany Martha Jefferson Randolph and her children there in 1809, when she moved to help her father.
In 1799 and 1800, Isaac's parents and brother Little George all died within a few months of each other. While ill, the family members consulted a black conjurer living in Buckingham County. (This showed the persistence of African traditions within the slave community.) Shortly after Great George's death, Thomas Jefferson gave Isaac $11, the value of "his moiety of a colt left him by his father."
In 1812 an Isaac belonging to Thomas Mann Randolph ran away and was caught and imprisoned in Bath County. It is unknown whether this was Isaac the blacksmith. Randolph had records of owning at least one other Isaac in this period.
Read more about this topic: Isaac Jefferson
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