Elizabeth-Ann Fossett Isaacs

Elizabeth-Ann Fossett Isaacs (1812-1902) was the daughter of Joseph Fossett and Edith (Edy) Hern. Joseph Fossett (1780-1858) was a member of the Hemings family that came to Monticello through Thomas Jefferson's marriage to Martha Wayles Skelton. His mother was Mary Hemings, the eldest daughter of Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings.

Joseph Fossett was foreman of the Monticello blacksmith shop and one of only five enslaved men freed by Jefferson in his will. Edith Fossett (1787-1854) trained in Washington, D.C., under a French chef and served as chief cook at Monticello during the period of Jefferson's retirement. It was of her cooking that Daniel Webster spoke when he described the meals at Monticello as "in half Virginian, half French style, in good taste and abundance."

Elizabeth-Ann Fossett, her mother, and seven siblings, were sold in the January 1827 auction following Jefferson's death. Joseph Fossett was later able to purchase the freedom of his wife and some of his eight children and move with them to Ohio in about 1840.

Elizabeth-Ann, freed by her father, married Tucker Isaacs (1809-1874), a free Charlottesville man of African and Jewish ancestry. They had nine children. When Isaacs fell under suspicion of forging "free papers" for escaped slaves in 1850, the family moved to Chillicothe, Ohio. For more on the Isaacs family, see "The Ties That Bind."

Frederick Douglas Isaacs
and Anne Elizabeth Chancellor Isaacs

Frederick Isaacs (1851-1904) was the youngest son of Tucker and Elizabeth-Ann Isaacs. 

 Virginia Isaacs (l) and older sister
Maria Elizabeth Isaacs

Maria Elizabeth (b. 1838) and Virginia Isaacs (1842-1934) were daughters of Elizabeth-Ann and Tucker Isaacs. The sisters married men who joined the 55th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War: Maria Elizabeth married William H. Dupree and Virginia married James Monroe Trotter.

Both sisters moved with their husbands to Boston, where they were numbered among the politically-active "black Brahmins." Virginia's son, William Monroe Trotter, was to become a crusading newspaper editor and implacable foe of the gradualist policies of Booker T. Washington. For more on Trotter, see "The Ties That Bind."