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.