Isham Randolph

Isham Randolph (December 1684 – November 1742), sometimes referred to as Isham Randolph of Dungeness, was the maternal grandfather of United States President Thomas Jefferson. Randolph was a planter, a merchant, a public official, and a shipmaster.

Early life

Randolph was born on the Turkey Island plantation in Henrico County, Virginia in December 1684. He was the third son of William Randolph (1650–1711) and Mary Isham (ca. 1659–1735). His father was a colonist, landowner, planter, and merchant who served as the 26th Speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Randolph graduated from the College of William & Mary.

Marriage and children

In 1717, Randolph married Jane Lilburne Susan Rogers in London at St. Paul's Church in the Shadwell parish (today east London). Jane was from a wealthy gentrified family of England and Scotland. Isham and Jane Randolph moved to Virginia. Together, they had nine children and was familially connected to many other prominent individuals:

• Jane Randolph (born ~1720), who married Peter Jefferson and had nine children, including Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States.
• Mary Randolph (born October 1725 in Colonial Williamsburg), who married Colonel Charles Lewis of Buck Island and had eight children, including Charles Lilburn Lewis, one of the founders of Milton, Virginia.
• Isham Randolph (born ~1725)
• William Randolph (born ~1727)
• Thomas Randolph (born ~1728), who married Jane Cary, the daughter of Archibald Cary, in 1768.
• Elizabeth Randolph (born ~1730)
• Dorothea Randolph (born ~1732)
• Ann Randolph (born ~1735), who had four children in three marriages. She was the mother of James Pleasants Jr., the 22nd Governor of Virginia, via her last marriage to James Pleasants Sr.
• Susannah Randolph (born September 25, 1738), who married Carter Henry Harrison I (the brother of Benjamin Harrison V, the son of Benjamin Harrison IV, and the grandson of Benjamin Harrison III and Robert "King" Carter) and had six children. She was the great-grandmother of Carter Henry Harrison III, a five-time mayor of Chicago.

Career and death

Following his father, he was a prominent planter, merchant, public official, and also was a shipmaster. In London, Randolph was a well-established merchant and agent for the colony of Virginia. By the birth of his second daughter, Mary, in October 1725, he returned to Colonial Virginia. In 1730, he built Dungeness, with English manor house style architecture on what became a large tobacco plantation, near Goochland, Virginia just west of Fine Creek (near the Fine Creek Mills Historic District). At the time that he acquired the land for Dungeness, it was frontier land, 40 miles from Richmond, Virginia. It became a house of "refinement and elegant hospitality" with a hundred or more servants.

Randolph was a member of the planter class or planter aristocracy, by which he owned slaves, grew tobacco, and engaged in trade. He traded with England, brought indentured servants to the colony, and engaged in the slave trade.

Like his good friend, Colonel William Byrd, Randolph had an interest in science and engaged in amaeteur science circles while in London. He was noted for his abilities as a naturalist by members of the Royal Society. As recommended by naturalist John Bartram, Randolph was visited and led botanist Peter Collinson on excursion gather specimens in colonial Virginia.

In 1738, Randolph became the adjutant general of Virginia. The following year, he became a colonel of the militia of Goochland County. He was also a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Randolph died in November 1742 and was buried on Turkey Island. In his will he assigned guardians of his children, including his son-in-law, Peter Jefferson (the father of President Thomas Jefferson.)

The distinguished qualities of the Gentleman he possessed in an eminent degree: To justice probity & honor so firmly attached that no view of secular interest or worldly advantage, no discouraging frowns of fortune could alter his Steady purpose of heart. By an easy Compliance and obliging deportment he new no enemy but gained many friends; this in life meriting an universal esteem.

— From the inscription on his tomb

Ancestry