Isaac Granger Jefferson

Isaac Granger Jefferson (1775-ca. 1850) was an enslaved tinsmith and blacksmith at Monticello. Granger's brief memoir, written down by an interviewer in the 1840s, provides important, fascinating information about Monticello, the free and enslaved community who lived there, and the major historical events that he witnessed.^[1] Granger was the third son of two important members of the enslaved labor force at Monticello. His father, George Granger, Sr., rose from foreman of labor to become, in 1797, overseer of Monticello — the only enslaved individual to reach that position — and received an annual wage of £20. Isaac Granger's mother, Ursula Granger, was an enslaved domestic servant whom Thomas Jefferson had purchased in 1773.^[2] She was a pastry cook and laundress; she also oversaw the preservation of meat and bottling of cider.

Isaac Granger Jefferson (1775-1846). Special Collections, University of Virginia Library

Isaac Granger spent his childhood on the mountaintop near his mother and from a very young age, he performed chores in and around the house. In his memoirs he speaks of lighting fires, carrying fuel, and opening gates.^[3] Because he and his parents accompanied the Jefferson family to Williamsburg and Richmond when Jefferson was governor, the young Isaac was witness to dramatic events in the Revolution. In his reminiscences he recounted his vivid memories of 1781, including Benedict Arnold's raid on Richmond and the internment camp for captured slaves at Yorktown.^[4]

Probably about 1790, Isaac Granger began his training in the metalworking trades. Jefferson took him to Philadelphia, where he was apprenticed for several years to a tinsmith. His own account is the only source of our knowledge of this aspect of his working life. He learned to make graters and pepper boxes and finally tin cups, four dozen a day. A tin shop was set up at Monticello on his return, but he recalled that it did not succeed. He also trained as a blacksmith under his older brother George Granger, Jr. and, sometime after 1794, became a nailer as well, dividing his time between nailmaking and smithing.^[5]

By 1796, Granger had a wife, Iris, and a son, Joyce. At this time he worked extra hours in the blacksmith shop, making chain traces for which Jefferson paid him threepence a pair. Also in 1796, according to Jefferson's records, Isaac Granger was the most efficient nailer. In the first three months of that year he made 507 pounds of nails in 47 days, wasting the least amount of nail rod and earning the highest daily return in profit for Jefferson — the equivalent of eighty-five cents a day.^[6]

In October 1797, Jefferson gave Isaac and Iris Granger, and their sons Squire and Joyce, to Maria and John Wayles Eppes as part of their marriage settlement.^[7] Thomas Mann Randolph was in need of a blacksmith at the time, so he hired Granger from Eppes,^[8] though records are fragmentary and inconclusive on this point. Granger and his family were moved to Randolph's Edgehill plantation in 1798. A daughter, Maria, was apparently born soon after.^[9] As some of Granger's memories indicate his presence at Monticello in Jefferson's retirement years, he may have been brought by the Randolphs to reside there in 1809.

Tragedy stuck in 1799 and 1800, when Isaac Granger's parents and brother George Granger Jr. all died within a few months of each other. The persistence of an African heritage at Monticello is indicated by the fact that, in their illness, the members of this family consulted a black healer living near Randolph Jefferson in Buckingham County.^[10] Shortly after George Granger Sr.'s death, Jefferson gave Isaac $11, the value of "his moiety of a colt left him by his father."^[11]

In 1812 an Isaac belonging to Thomas Mann Randolph ran away and was caught and imprisoned in Bath County.^[12] We have as yet no way of knowing if this was Isaac Granger, the blacksmith; Randolph owned at least one other man named Isaac in this period.

How Isaac Granger gained his freedom is also unknown. He reported that he left Albemarle County about four years before Thomas Jefferson's death. He met and talked with the Marquis de Lafayette in Richmond in 1824. In 1847, he was a free man in Petersburg, still practicing his blacksmithing trade at the age of seventy-two.^[13] His reminiscences, taken down by the Reverend Charles Campbell in that year, do not reveal whether he took the surname Jefferson by choice or whether it was imposed on him by a white official, as was the case with Israel Gillette Jefferson, his fellow member of the enslaved community.

The fates of Iris, Squire, and Joyce Granger are unknown. Isaac Granger had a wife, apparently not Iris, at the time of his death. Campbell wrote that Isaac Granger died "a few years after these his recollections were taken down. He bore a good character."^[14]

Further Sources

• Jefferson, Isaac [Granger]. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave. Edited by Rayford W. Logan. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1951. A scan of the original manuscript and transcription of the text is available in the Encyclopedia Virginia.

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