In response to Ronald Seagrave:
The legal status and the movements of Isaac Jefferson are something of a
puzzle. At age 71 and still working, he was interviewed by Charles W.
Campbell in Petersburg in 1847; the manuscript of the memoir was not
discovered until a century later and was first published 1951, reissued 1967
by James Bear as "Jefferson at Monticello," along with the memoir of Edmund
Bacon, the overseer, with Bear's scholarly apparatus. Campbell's manuscript
typesetting copy is at UVA Special Collections and is online. See also a
very valuable discussion on Herb Barger's site:
http://www.tjheritage.org/Berkleyinterview.html
We don't quite know how Isaac got to Petersburg. In his memoir Isaac states,
"Isaac left Monticello four years before Mr. Jefferson died." He says that
Thomas Mann Randolph wanted him to build a threshing machine at Varina.
{Bear, pp. 18, 22.} Isaac said he lived with Thomas Mann Randolph and his
wife 26 or 27 years. {Bear, p. 15-16.} An endnote by Campbell says that
Isaac was married and had two children. Bear says that they were all deeded
to one of Jefferson's daughters in 1797, but that the next year Isaac went
to live with Martha and Thomas Mann Randolph.
Cinder Stanton writes in "Free Some Day," pp. 51, 24: "Some time in the
1820s Isaac Jefferson made his way to Richmond and then to Petersburg,
Virginia, evidently as a free man. . . . Thomas Mann Randolph may have
manumitted him or he may have purchased his own freedom." Perhaps Isaac
became quasi-free in the same manner as Jupiter's son Phil Evans. In his
memoir TJ Randolph wrote that Evans "hired himself from me at a nominal
hire." Perhaps Isaac Jefferson was allowed to do the same thing.
Actually, Jefferson did record the deaths and the transfers/sales of many of
his slaves. See the Plantation Database at Monticello.org, and the Farm
Book, which is online in a magnificent, searchable transcription at the
Mass. Historical Society site.
Isaac does make some errors, noted by Bear, but nothing that completely
discredits his account. He describes Sally Hemings and her family but says
nothing whatever on the Hemings/Jefferson question. His account is one of
the most important sources we have for life at Monticello.
Henry Wiencek
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