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Randolph Jefferson's Legacy by Joanne Yeck Scottsville Museum Newsletter Number 29 Page 4 Randolph Jefferson’s Legacy By Joanne Yeck hood, all of Randolph and Anne Jef- Well over ten years ago, I stumbled myth that had persisted about the low ferson’s children lived at or near upon Randolph Jefferson for the first level of Randolph Jefferson’s intelli- Snowden or across the river at time. I was tracing my Harris family’s gence and questioned his competency Scottsville. Peter Field Jefferson set- acquisition of Snowden, a plantation to run a 2,000-acre plantation. A pri- tled in Scottsville, destined to make lying in Buckingham County, directly mary, and I believed powerful, argu- the most significant impact on the across from Scottsville at the Horse- ment against this myth was the suc- town and its environs. The story of shoe Bend of the James River. In the cessful lives of the majority of his his life parallels the changing cultur- 1820s, a land tax record noted that a children and grandchildren. He and al landscape of the James River’s significant percentage of the farm had his wife, Anne Lewis, had provided Horseshoe Bend across seven dec- been transferred from the estate of them with a solid start in life and ades—rising from virtual frontier in Randolph Jefferson to Capt. John most of them flourished. A few, how- the early American Republic to the Harris of Albemarle County. Needless ever, I discovered led tragic lives. establishment of the town, through to say, the Jefferson name caught my The loss of these Jeffersons as useful the building of the James River and attention, though I had no idea who citizens was not because their parents Kanawha Canal, and culminating in Randolph Jefferson was. It did not had failed to nurture them, but be- the early months of the Civil War. take long to find out, however, it took cause Nature had failed to provide Just as Scottsville mirrored the matu- years to collect the information that them with a strong genetic founda- ration of Virginia and the American turned him from a stereotype into a tion. Randolph and Anne were first South, Peter Field Jefferson’s turbu- three-dimensional character. cousins and their union risked con- lent life reflected those growing One result of discovering Randolph centrating undesirable genetic traits pains, becoming a personal, Ameri- Jefferson was writing and publishing in their children. Eventually, the lives can tragedy told in the monograph, his biography, The Jefferson Brothers of their descendants became the sub- Peter Field Jefferson: Dark Prince (Slate River Press, 2012), which high- ject of my next Jefferson-related pro- of Scottsville. lighted his relationship with his broth- ject: Peter Field Jefferson: Dark Beyond the story of Peter Field Jef- er, President Thomas Jefferson, and Prince of Scottsville & Lost Jeffer- ferson’s personal decline, an even traced the development of Snowden sons (Slate River Press, 2018). larger tragedy unfolds in this Jeffer- from the American Revolution Between 1782 and 1796, Randolph son clan. A microcosm of multiple through Randolph’s death in 1815. and Anne (Lewis) Jefferson had six generations of cousin intermarriage, Frustratingly, Randolph Jefferson left children together: Anna Scott his family’s story reveals how little material evidence for historians (Jefferson) Nevil, Thomas Jefferson, “undesirable” traits became concen- to work with. Due to the burning of Jr., Isham Randolph Jefferson, Robert trated in this particular Jefferson line. Buckingham County’s courthouse in Lewis Jefferson, Peter Field Jeffer- Hereditary insanity, alcoholism, and 1869, many of the public documents son, and James Lilburne Jefferson. idiocy plagued succeeding genera- relating to him and to Snowden during They came of age at the dawn of the tions. In the broader society, a steadi- his lifetime were destroyed. The burn- th 19 century, precisely when the cul- ly mounting number of suffering in- ing of his dwelling house at Snowden ture along the James River in Central dividuals, acts of criminal insanity, in early 1816 took with it whatever Virginia flowered. Over the course of and the increasing social burden of personal papers he might have saved. their adulthood, their choices ex- asylums to house Virginia’s Fortunately, his brother, Thomas, left pressed not only their own personali- “degenerates” helped fuel the Ameri- significant tracks. Other family letters ties but also the values of this branch can Eugenics Movement and, ulti- helped define Randolph, as well as a of the Jefferson family and Virginia’s mately, in 1924, led to Virginia’s few surviving private and public rec- gentry class. Sterilization Act. ords which documented, for example, the time he spent in Williamsburg at Little is known about Randolph Jef- By 1880, the federal government was William and Mary’s Grammar School ferson’s children while they lived at deeply concerned about the growing and his service during the American Snowden. What is recorded survives number of unproductive Americans Revolution, riding under Gen. Thomas in scattered sources. Much is con- and created a special, supplemental Nelson, Jr. (later to become Governor fused, misleading, incorrect, and even schedule for the national census— of Virginia). fictitious. Many of these “facts” con- “Defective, Dependent, and Delin- tradict each other. quent Classes.” By the end of the Increasingly, I felt that this absence of th 19 century, asylums and other documentation fueled an undeserved At various times during their adult- (Continued on page 5 Scottsville Museum Newsletter Number 29 Page 5 institutions kept statistics on whether Jefferson, particularly his third family. of the James River and comparative or not their patients were the products His first two wives were his close safety for themselves and their chil- of first cousin marriages. cousins, while his third wife, Sarah dren. As the years progressed, howev- Even in President Thomas Jefferson’s Ann Mansfield, was not. Despite the er, what was established as the fami- generation, “inferior” genes were dou- fact that two of their sons died at a ly’s sanctuary became a place of self- bling up, particularly in the Randolph young age (one of typhoid fever), the imposed isolation. couple produced an apparently family. Outsiders noted that intelli- Over the decades, hundreds upon healthy, intelligent, and successful gence seemed unevenly distributed hundreds of wagons rumbled into family, including two attorneys and a among the children of Peter and Jane Scottsville, delivering goods to be physician. (Randolph) Jefferson. Their daughter, shipped up to Lynchburg or down to Elizabeth (1744–1774) was “feeble- I now believe that some of the uncom- Richmond and filling the little boats minded” while their daughter Jane plimentary rumors asserting Randolph that ran on the river. Capitalizing on (1740–1765) was exceptionally bright. Jefferson’s low intelligence and possi- this traffic, both through the town and Both died unmarried and childless. ble alcoholism were at least partially on the river, Peter Field Jefferson laid Virginians were experts on breeding, based in the sad lives of Peter Field the foundation of his fortune. The particularly of horses, but turned a Jefferson and his unfortunate sons— coming of the canal and how it blind eye to too much inbreeding in one committed to Western Lunatic changed commerce on the James their families. Preservation of wealth Asylum, the other labeled “idiotic.” River is seen from a new perspective, and land took precedence. Thomas Jefferson descendants and citizens of creating yet another opportunity for Jefferson, who observed the some- Scottsville long remembered this fam- Peter Field Jefferson to increase his times negative consequences of cousin ily and, as the years went by, perhaps, wealth. Working at his waterfront marriage, still allowed his daughter projected their deficiencies back on store and operating the ferry at Scotts- Martha to marry her cousin Thomas Randolph Jefferson—a strange case of ville, his eccentricities were observed Mann Randolph, and encouraged his the “sins” of the children being visited (and commented on) daily by the daughter Maria to marry her cousin on the father. townspeople. As he aged, he became John Wayles Eppes. For anyone who is interested in the obsessed with money—making it, founding and development of Scotts- investing it, hoarding it and, rarely, Because Randolph and Anne Jefferson enjoying it. At the time of his death, were first cousins, genetics might ac- ville, Peter Field Jefferson’s story in- cludes a fresh look at the years be- Peter Field Jefferson was little loved count for the alcoholism and unstable and, perhaps, little understood by personalities which manifested in suc- tween the laying off of the first town lots and the opening days of the Civil those who had known him all of his ceeding generations of their family. life. Sterility or genetic incompatibility was War. Many of his peers—some of possibly another misfortune of in- them well-documented founding fa- Beyond his personal story, Peter breeding. Randolph’s son, Thomas thers of Scottsville and some lesser Field Jefferson: Dark Prince of Jefferson, Jr., and his wife, Polly known residents whom Jefferson took Scottsville also provides another Lewis, were double first cousins. into his confidence—comment on the chapter in the history of Snowden, Married over thirty years, they man’s life in their own words. which was created by purchase and produced no known children. Through the use of newspaper articles patent by his grandfather, Peter Jef- ferson; enjoyed for a lifetime by his Some of the grandchildren of Ran- published across a century, Scottsville comes alive in vivid 19th century father, Randolph Jefferson; and, ulti- dolph and Anne Jefferson, most the mately, lost to Peter Field and his product of further cousin intermar- prose. Readers will revisit the vicious murder of Thomas Noel at his Scotts- brothers in the 1820s to Capt.
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