Nancy Colbert Scott

Nancy Colbert Scott was most likely the daughter of Monticello’s enslaved butler Burwell Colbert and his wife, Critta Hemings. In the late 1820s, Jefferson’s grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph sold her to Albemarle County clerk Alexander Garrett, who in 1842 sold her to her husband, Robert Scott. The Scotts had at least nine children and lived on Charlottesville’s main street.

Nancy Scott’s oldest child, Elizabeth, was the subject of a remarkable story preserved orally by her descendants and validated by historical records. It states that Elizabeth, who took the surname of her stepfather, Robert Scott, was Thomas J. Randolph’s daughter and was sold to the Garrett family. After trying to run away, she was recaptured, put on the auction block, and sold to a Dr. William Cox. Cox would go on to make Elizabeth Scott his mistress. They had five children, one of them being Nannie Cox Jackson, a noted Charlottesville educator and community leader. When Emancipation came in 1865, Elizabeth Scott determined to live independently and supported her family by working as a dressmaker.