Descendants Speak
Articles written by descendantsISAIAH ALLEN JACKSON III
By B. Henry Anglin
Isaiah Allen Jackson III (January, 1945 – December, 2025), was a renowned African American conductor and professor in a world where African American classical musicians faced difficulty ascending to the position of conductor or music director.
He was the great-grandson of Alan Jackson who was born in a slave cabin on the Newman Plantation at Bloomfield in Orange County, Virginia. After emancipation, Alan left the plantation, changed his name from Alan Newman to Alan Jackson, and was instrumental in establishing an African American community in Orange County called Jacksontown.
Alan Jackson and his wife, Delilah Tyree Jackson had six children. His family believed that education was the only useful response to a racist society. The three youngest children, John Butler Jackson, Mitchell Leroy Jackson, and Isaiah Allen Jackson, grew up in Jacksontown. Butler became a cabinetmaker, Mitchell was the head builder at James Madison’s Montpelier during the duPont era, and Allen, a physician who, at one time, had a practice in Orange, Virginia.
Photo courtesy: E. Azalia Hackley Collection, Detroit Public Library
Allen later moved to Richmond, Virginia where he and fellow physicians established the Richmond Community Hospital, a hospital serving African Americans. Allen’s sons (Isaiah Allen II and Reginald) followed in their father’s footsteps, becoming physicians.
At the age of two, Isaiah Allen Jackson III suffered a severe wrist injury after falling on a milk bottle and severing his tendons. His father, an orthopedic surgeon, prescribed piano lessons. Isaiah took to his lessons with dedication and joy and music became a permanent part of his life. To make sure Isaiah received the best education, in 1959, his parents decided to send him to Putney, an integrated, progressive and academically intense private boarding school in Vermont. In the 1960s, Isaiah and his friends at Putney picketed the local Woolworth’s near Battleboro in support of the lunch counter sit-ins happening in the South.
Isaiah enrolled at Harvard University after high school. While he wanted to pursue music, his father hoped Isaiah would join the diplomatic corps after he graduated. Isaiah chose to major in Russian history and literature, which reflected the international politics of the time. Although he chose these courses, music was his primary interest.
Isaiah dabbled in conducting at Harvard. He had the opportunity to conduct the Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte. Isaiah was so taken by this experience, he decided to pursue a career in music. After graduating from Harvard cum laude, Isaiah enrolled in Stanford University receiving a M.A. in Music. Isaiah then spent a summer in France with Nadia Boulanger, a renowned French music teacher, before attending Juilliard School of Music in New York. While still a student at Juilliard, Isaiah was named Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony. He became the founder and conductor for the Juilliard String Ensemble, and was appointed assistant to conductor Leopold Stokowski with the American Symphony Orchestra. He also served as assistant conductor for the Baltimore Symphony. Isaiah received his Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) in 1973 from Juilliard.
After completing his studies, Isaiah became associate conductor for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. During this time, he also served as guest conductor for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Queensland Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony, and conducted ballet at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He became the first Black conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1983, and the first Black conductor to lead the annual Gospel Night program.
Isaiah also performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem at the Royal Opera House in London. Following this performance, the Royal Opera House musical staff was so impressed that they invited him back as a guest conductor, and subsequently he became the first American and first African American Music Director of the Royal Ballet. The British press credited him with transforming the Royal Ballet Orchestra (once described as “sloppy”) into a “sparkling, rhythmically taut and eloquent ensemble”.
In 1987, Isaiah became the first African American conductor of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, where he often included the works of African Americans on the program. He was also an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Dayton, where he taught Philosophy of Music.
Isaiah was awarded the prestigious Signet Society Medal of achievement in the arts from the Signet Society of Harvard University, joining past recipients such as T.S. Elliot, and Robert Frost. In 2000, he was the first African American to conduct the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.
Due to a hearing loss, Isaiah retired from conducting in 2006. Isaiah was a faculty member at Berklee College of Music until 2022. He also taught at Harvard University, the Longy School of Music, Juilliard School, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and Youngstown State.
About the author: B. Henry Anglin is the great-grandson of Alan Jackson. He is a board member and Memorialization Chair of the Montpelier Descendants Committee.
Benjamin McDaniel
By Patricia J. McDanielHIS LEGACY CONTINUES
In the 1960s, my father told me a story about one of his ancestors. He said that one of his grandfathers was a slave to President Madison and served as one of his livery drivers. He said that President Madison had our ancestor drive him to the inauguration and that our ancestor got him there on time. At the time of this story, my father didn’t know the name of his ancestor, nor did he know how many generations removed he was. Nevertheless, the story came down through the ages and through people who weren’t generally interested in genealogy–they were just passing down family stories. I didn’t know if the story was true or not, but, because it called forth the name of a Founding Father, I was somewhat dubious. We lived in a neighborhood in which everyone was descended from slaves, so I feared that it might be a bit of braggadocio. I was wrong.
I have always been interested in genealogy and started working on our family tree in the mid-1970s. In 1977, I traveled to Orange County, Virginia, to do research because that’s where my father’s (Horace McDaniel, 1929-2014) family was from. I knew that my grandfather was named Henry Jackson McDaniel (1893-1963), and I knew the year of his birth. I also knew that Henry’s mother was named Jane, but that was all the information that I had. I found the records pertaining to Jane McDaniel in the “colored” section of the Orange County courthouse. That alone made for some interesting drama: because I am light-skinned and usually mistaken for white, the lady at the counter whispered to me about the “colored” section only after I told her that I was not finding a record of my grandmother in the main section.
What I learned was that Jane McDaniel (1857-1944) was born in Orange County and she bore several children, including my grandfather Henry, while unmarried. In this way, the McDaniel name was passed on through the female line. Jane later married a man with the last name of Madison which caused me a bit of confusion because Jane’s father was named Madison McDaniel. I later realized that many people in the local area took the last name of Madison or named their children after the president.
Madison McDaniel (1833-1913) had four children with his first wife Frances Ellis (1830-1900). One of these children was my great-grandmother Jane. Although Frances had previously been married, it appears that she had had two children while unmarried because, as was the case with Jane and the McDaniel line, Frances’ children carried the Ellis name. Census records show that Frances brought her children into the marriage with Madison because, in 1870, all of the children were living together in the Madison McDaniel household.
Madison’s father was Benjamin McDaniel (abt. 1790-1875). Benjamin was enslaved at Montpelier, likely as a cobbler (this was his occupation as listed on the 1870 census). While the oral history I received, in which Benjamin served as a liveryman could also be true, I found no evidence of that in the record. President Madison was inaugurated in March 1809, at which time Benjamin would have been about 19 years of age, so the story of Benjamin getting Madison to his inauguration on time is plausible. Unfortunately, I could not find any records one way or the other. While enslaved, Benjamin had the surname of McDaniel. A “slave pass” is on file at the New York Public Library that states, “Please to let Benjamin McDaniel pass to Dr. Henkal’s in New Market, in Shenandoah County, VA and return on Monday or Tuesday next to Montpelier in 1843 for Mrs. Madison. June 1st, 1843.” Although many enslaved people had surnames, these often were not recorded, so we were fortunate to find this record.
The record itself about Benjamin is very sparse. I attended an enslaved Descendants weekend at Montpelier in 2007, and was interviewed by a researcher while there. I told the story of Benjamin serving as a liveryman, but the researcher said that they had no information about that, and, in fact, they had very little information about Benjamin at all. At that time, the work with the descendant’s community at Montpelier was in its infancy, and I was assigned an intern to work with me to gather information about Benjamin. The intern found much of the same information that I had established through my own family tree, but one of my colleagues, William Cox, directed the researchers to the “slave pass” (which they knew about) as well as Freedmen’s Bureau records (which they did not). Cox also pointed them to the Dolley Payne Todd Madison’s Deed of Gift of 17 July 1844, in which Dolley Madison gave John P. Todd several enslaved persons, including one “Ben;” we cannot be sure this is Benjamin McDaniel.
In 1867, Benjamin (listed in the Freedmen’s Bureau file as “formerly a servant of President Madison”) filed a claim with the Freedmen’s Bureau stating that he had purchased his freedom from a Joseph Herndon and had also “laid by some money for his old age.” In his claim, he stated that he lent one Erasmus Taylor (a white man) $50.00 in gold and was paid back $50.00 in Virginia script, which Benjamin declined, and which became virtually worthless. Although I was not able to determine whether Benjamin was ever repaid, it was obvious that Benjamin was able to amass enough money not only to buy his freedom, but also to have money to lend. It appears that Benjamin’s son Madison was also in the lending business because the Freedmen’s Bureau records a case in 1867 where a Mr. Perkins had pawned a watch with Madison.
In 1892, at age 25, Madison McDaniel’s son Tucker (my great-grandmother’s brother) moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from Orange, Virginia, to better his opportunities. He bred and raced horses and was able to buy a house in Pittsburgh, which allowed many of his nieces and nephews to move from Orange. One such extended family member was my grandfather, Henry, who moved to Pittsburgh in about 1914 when he was 21. His first wife Mamie died of pneumonia in 1921, leaving two young children. My grandfather remarried shortly afterward and had nine more children with my grandmother Anna. By the 1950s, my father’s generation took advantage of better opportunities for African Americans in the Pittsburgh Police Department, and four of the McDaniel brothers, including my father, became high-ranking police officers. They took great pride in Benjamin and in his story, and they passed it down to the members of our generation and to our children’s generation as well.
Although the historical record is meager, each generation kept Benjamin’s story alive. They wanted to be sure we wouldn’t forget who we were–who we are–and in so doing, work to make a better future.
About the author: Patricia J. McDaniel is an attorney with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Austin, Texas. She is a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a self-trained genealogist who has been researching family history since the 1970’s.