Daguerreotype of Isaac Jefferson

Isaac Jefferson, also known as Isaac Granger, who had been enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, is the subject of this daguerreotype made about 1845. A son of the enslaved George and Ursula Granger, Isaac Jefferson labored at Monticello as a tinsmith, nail maker, and blacksmith. He gained his freedom in the 1820s and later worked as a blacksmith in Petersburg, where this image was made; Isaac Jefferson was then about seventy years old. He dictated his reminiscences to the Reverend Charles Campbell in about 1847.