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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The Lewis Boys

 



Lilburne and Isham Lewis were the sons of Dr. Charles Lilburn Lewis as well as President Thomas Jefferson’s nephews. The brothers were also related to Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. They owned an enormous farm in Kentucky, were constantly broke and nearly always drunk….and they were mean drunks.

On the afternoon of December 15, 1811 the brothers were, of course, drunk and Lilburne ordered a 17-year-old slave named George to fill a pitcher of water. (He was named George Lewis but also known as Slave George or Lilburn Lewis' slave George)

George dropped the jar, and the brothers snapped. Lilburne and Isham dragged George into a plantation kitchen, chained him to the floor, and ordered their other slaves to build a fire.

Lilburne pulled out an axe and chopped off George’s head. The brothers then ordered the slaves to dismember the body and toss it in the fireplace.

The Lewises probably would’ve gotten away with their crime if an earthquake, The New Madrid quake, hadn’t struck the very next day at 3:15 a.m. Eastern time. It was and remains the most powerful earthquake ever recorded east of the Rocky mountains. In the days afterward, the brothers made other slaves rebuild the chimney and hide the remains within it. Two additional megaquakes jolted the region on January 23, 1812 and February 7, 1812. The second caused a partial collapse of the chimney that had concealed George's remains.

In early March 1812, a neighborhood dog retrieved the young man's skull and deposited it in open view in a roadway. Neighbors saw the skull and determined it had belonged to slave George, who was missing, and learned that he had been murdered. In slaveholding areas of the United States, the torturous murder of a slave was illegal.

The brothers were arrested and jailed. But after they skipped bail, the duo made a suicide pact. Things didn’t go as planned. The brothers intended to shoot each other, but before they could fire, Lilburne accidentally shot himself (Most accounts say it was suicide) and quickly bled to death. Isham took off only to be arrested a second time for assisting a suicide. No one knows what happened to Isham Lewis. Another of Jefferson's nephews, stated that Isham "escaped from jail in Salem, Kentucky and six weeks later enlisted for five years in a U.S. Army Infantry company. The day after Isham enlisted, war was declared against England." and "Isham was one of seven men killed on the American side" at the Battle of New Orleans.