Jefferson's Nephews: A Frontier Tragedy

by Boynton Merrill Jr. Jr., Boynton Merrill Jr

Overview

The brutal axe murder and dismemberment of a Negro slave, committed in 1811 by two brothers, Lilburne and Isham Lewis, whose mother was Thomas Jefferson’s sister and whose father was his first cousin, form the core of this historical detective story and account of frontier life in western Kentucky in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

On the night of December 15, 1811, drunk and enraged over the breaking of a pitcher, Lilburne bound his seventeen-year-old slave, George, and, in front of the assembled household’s other slaves, cut off his head. The brothers were indicted for murder, released on bail, and attempted suicide.

Boynton Merrill Jr. explores the tragic combination of circumstances and social forces that culminated in this ghastly event: the lawlessness of the frontier settlements, the dehumanizing effects of chattel slavery, and the Lewis family’s history of mental instability and their ever-declining fortunes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803282971
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	09/28/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	462
Sales rank:	272,474
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Boynton Merrill Jr. lives in Henderson, Kentucky. He acquired part of the original Lewis plantation in 1965 and spent more than ten years researching and assembling the pieces of this classic case study.

Editorial Reviews

"Jefferson’s Nephews is superb. Mr. Merrill’s book is horridly fascinating, as absorbing, as gruesome, and as intelligent as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood."—New York Times Book Review

New York Times Book Review

"One must be grateful to Boynton Merrill for having rescued this grim footnote to history from oblivion and for having guided us so well through all the twists of a very tangled tale. . . . Cecil B. de Mille! Thou shouldst be living at this hour."—Times Literary Supplement (London)

Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Celebrated in abolitionist literature. . . . This grisly story has finally been researched with sensitivity and in scholarly detail."—American Historical Review

American Historical Review

The New York Times compared Merrill's 1976 volume to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It recounts in fine detail the December 1811 axe murder of a slave in western Kentucky by Liliburne and Isham Lewis, the sons of Thomas Jefferson's late sister, Lucy. Merrill re-creates the events of the crime and the social atmosphere of the time. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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