Witchcraft in Early North America - Alison Games [99]
Source: The South Carolina Gazette
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16. Poison at Monticello, 1800
These three letters, one from Thomas Jefferson’s daughter Martha Randolph to her father, the second from Thomas Jefferson to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, and the third from Thomas Randolph to Jefferson, reported the death of a valuable family of slaves whom Jefferson owned at Monticello. At the time of these letters, Jefferson was vice president of the United States and the Randolphs were helping to run Monticello. Jupiter grew up alongside Thomas Jefferson and worked as his personal servant. George supervised the nailery; his father, Great George, was an overseer; his mother was Ursula. The men died in June (George Junior) and November (George Senior), 1799. What do you make of Randolph’s use of the term “conjurer?” Were they poisoned? What did Jupiter think, and how did he try to cure himself?
Martha Jefferson Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, Edge Hill,
January 30, 1800
[T]o your enquiries relative to poor Jupiter he too has paid the debt to nature; finding himself no better at his return home, he unfortunately conceived him self poisoned & went to consult the negro doctor who attended the George’s. he went in the house to see uncle Randolph who gave him a dram which he drank & seemed to be as well as he had been for some time past; after which he took a dose from this black doctor who pronounced that it would kill or cure. 2 ½ hours after taking the medicine he fell down in a strong convulsion fit which lasted from ten to eleven hours, during which time it took 3 stout men to hold him, he languished nine days but was never heard to speak from the first of his being seized to the moment of his death. Ursula is I fear going in the same manner with her husband & son, a constant puking shortness or [sic] breath and swelling first in the legs but now extending itself the doctor I understand had also given her means as they term it and upon Jupiter’s death has absconded. I should think his murders sufficiently manifest to come under the cognizance of the law. . . .
M. Randolph
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Philadelphia,
March 31, 1800
[W]hat is mentioned to me in your letter & Richardson’s of the state of Ursula is remarkeable. the symptoms & progress of her disease are well worthy attention. that a whole family should go off in the same & so singular a way is a problem of difficulty. . . .
Thomas Mann Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, [circa 19 April 1800]
Ursula is very near her last: tho’ her case some time since has declared itself desperate I got Bache to visit her upon your desire to have some theory of so extraordinary a fact as has occurred in that family. All her symptoms are the same with her husband & son; but the Dropsy is general in her tho’ the Hydrothorax is as manifest and as violent as in either of them. I think I have always understood that in robust, bulky, middle aged bodies living in a pure & wholesome air, upon strong & plentiful diet with moderate labor; a complete destruction of the tone of the system produces dropsy, when in opposite situations & habits, pulmonary consumption, or atrophy without it, or the bilious declines so common in the low country of Virginia take place. The poisons of the Buckingham Negroe conjuror appear to have a power of unstringing the whole system beyond recovery in a short time; of destroying the elasticity or rather the Vital Virtue of muscular fibre & nervous thread in a few weeks or days as completely in a healthy African slave as the abuse of