Chapter 3: A Declaration of Their Own

Corrections
p. 57 — “Isaac Jefferson lived for another seventy years. After his ten months of freedom, he spent the rest of his life enslaved.” Isaac — who chose the surname Granger, not Jefferson — spent the next forty years enslaved, but maybe not the rest of his life. We have no record of how or when he might have obtained his freedom. The 1840 census listed an Isaac Granger as a “Free Colored Person” in Petersburg, Virginia, where Isaac was living and working when the Rev. Charles Campbell interviewed him in 1847 for the memoir that provides almost everything we know about him and his experiences in 1781. Campbell makes no reference to his status, other than noting that he was a blacksmith with a shop. For more on Isaac, check out Monticello’s encyclopedia entry on him at https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/isaac-granger-jefferson and Life of Isaac Jefferson of Petersburg, Virginia, Blacksmith listed in this chapter’s sources.