Slave George

George Lewis (also known as Slave George or Lilburn Lewis' slave George) (c. 1794 – December 15, 1811) was a 17-year-old African American boy held as a slave; he was murdered in western Kentucky on the night of December 15–16, 1811 by Lilburne and Isham Lewis, grown sons of Dr. Charles Lilburn Lewis and Lucy Jefferson Lewis, and nephews of Thomas Jefferson. The brothers were also related to Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame.

Because the killing coincided with the time and location of the New Madrid earthquake and the ensuing disgrace of the prominent Lewis family, accounts of it quickly became part of the regional and national lore. Soon after being released on bail, Lilburne Lewis shot himself. Jailed after his brother's death, Isham escaped and disappeared from the area, and is believed to have perished in the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815.

Early life and education George was born into slavery in 1794 in Virginia and held by the Lewis family. He grew up as a house slave and learned what was needed in the kitchen and other areas. When Randolph and Lilburne Lewis decided to move to Kentucky in 1806 with their families, they took their slaves with them, including George.

Background In early 1811, Lilburne and Isham Lewis were still in mourning for their mother and older brother Randolph, who had died the year before. Lilburne had also lost his first wife in 1811. He had remarried a local woman named Letitia. She was pregnant with their first child by early 1812, and Lilburne was struggling to support his first five children after a series of financial setbacks.

New Madrid earthquake

The dismemberment of George's decapitated corpse was interrupted by the most powerful U.S. earthquake ever recorded east of the Rocky mountains, the Great New Madrid earthquake, which struck at 3:15 a.m. Eastern time (2:15 a.m. in the Central Standard Time observed in the western Kentucky locale of the murder). Lilburne intended to destroy the evidence by having the slaves burn George's dismembered body, but the New Madrid earthquake caused the chimney to collapse around the fire. (They were likely in the kitchen cabin.) In the days afterward, the brothers made other slaves rebuild the chimney and hide the remains within it.

Many books and articles since 1812 have examined the case of slave George and Jefferson's nephews. Historian Boynton Merrill Jr. considered the case as arising out of the power abuses inherent in the institution of slavery, frontier stresses, mounting personal and financial losses in the Lewis family, Lilburne's mental instability, and abuse of alcohol by both brothers.

Representation in other media The poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren explored the scandal in his book-length poem Brother to Dragons, A Tale in Verse and Voices (1953, revised 1979).