| Sources |
- [S61] World Family Tree, (Name: Family Tree Maker;).
- [S110] Yates Publishing, U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900, (Name: Ancestry.com Operations Inc; Location: Provo, UT, USA; Date: 2004;), Source number: 43.000; Source type: Electronic Database; Number of Pages: 1; Submitter Code: LDF.
- [S2128] Wikipedia: Ambrose Madison, (Name: Wikipedia;), Ambrose Madison.
Frances and Ambrose Madison's share of land was the basis of their plantation, which they called Mount Pleasant (later to be known as Montpelier (Orange, Virginia). To clear the land to secure title, Madison bought 29 African slaves, likely Igbo, who worked under white overseers for five years before the Madisons moved to the property. The Madison family moved to the plantation in 1732 after a house had been built and tobacco cultivation had started. They had several children, and their oldest son was James Madison Sr., the future father of U.S. President James Madison.
Ambrose Madison died that summer at age 36 after a short illness, on August 27, 1732. The family or the sheriff believed he was poisoned by slaves, and three were charged in the case. As the historian Douglas B. Chambers notes in his 2005 book on the Igbo in Virginia, historic evidence was severely limited. There is no way for historians to assess what the charges were based on, and if they arose more out of planter fears of slaves than slave actions.
According to the brief court records, three African slaves were charged and convicted by the justices of the Commission of Peace of poisoning the planter. The justices apparently believed Dido and Turk, owned by the widow Frances Taylor Madison, had lesser roles and, after punishing them by whipping, returned the slaves to her for continued labor. Pompey, owned by a neighboring planter, was believed the ringleader and was executed. As Chambers notes, they were the first slaves convicted in Virginia of a planter's murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Madison
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