Isaac Jefferson
His father rose in the hierarchy from foreman of labor to become overseer of Monticello in 1797, the only slave to reach that position under Thomas Jefferson.
Because Jefferson took Great George, Ursula, and their family with him to Williamsburg and Richmond when he was elected governor, the boy Isaac witnessed dramatic events during the Revolutionary War.
He later recounted vivid memories of 1781, including Benedict Arnold's raid on Richmond and seeing the internment camp for captured slaves at Yorktown.
He was working extra hours in the blacksmith shop to make chain traces, for which Jefferson paid him three pence a pair.
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.
When Jefferson's son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph needed a blacksmith, he leased Isaac from Eppes.
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.
[1] In the early 1840s, Granger was working as a free man in Petersburg as a blacksmith, when he was interviewed by Charles Campbell, who published the account that year as the memoir of Isaac Jefferson.
[2] In the interview, Granger recounted details about the relationship of Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings (or Hemmings) family.
Some scholars think that adds weight to other historic testimony that Sally Hemings and her five full siblings were half-siblings of the president's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson.
[2] The memoir describes the integral role which the Betty Hemings family played at Monticello as domestic slaves, skilled artisans and craftsmen, and staff who ran the president's mansion.
According to a document from August 20, 1846, "Isaac Jefferson having been dead more than three months & no person having applied for administration of his estate, it is ordered that the same be committed to J Branch Sergt.
The Monticello staff have found another reference to the Granger surname in Monticello and related records: in the 1870 census of Albemarle County, an Archy Granger and his family were living at Edgehill Plantation, then owned by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's grandson.
Thomas J. Randolph had purchased Archy from Monticello after his grandfather Jefferson's death in 1826, when 130 slaves were sold to pay off debts of the estate.
