"Notorious in the Neighborhood": An Interracial Family in Early National and Antebellum Virginia.

ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1796, THOMAS WEST, AWARE OF THE ILLNESS THAT would kill him just a few months later, wrote his last will and testament. West, a white blacksmith, owned land in both Amherst and Albemarle Counties, including ten half-acre lots in the town of Charlottesville, which amounted roughly to one-fifth of the town at the time of his death. In his will, West named two of his children--James Henry West and Nancy West--as heirs. Both children were free people of color born of a relationship between the elder West and a woman named Priscilla, who at one point in her life had belonged to her children's father. West left all of his land, livestock, and furniture, as well as his eight slaves, to James Henry West and his family. His fourteen-year-old daughter Nancy West was left only the annual interest on forty pounds held by her guardian, local merchant Thomas Bell, until she turned twenty-one, at which time she would receive the principal.(1)

Among the witnesses to Thomas West's will was David Isaacs, another local merchant. Isaacs, born in 1760 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, had immigrated to the United States and moved to Charlottesville sometime in the early 1790s from Richmond, where he and his brother Isaiah had been traders in Cohen and Isaacs, one of the city's largest mercantile firms. Both Jewish, the Isaacses were also among the founders of Beth Shalome, the capital's first synagogue. In Charlottesville, the brothers lived downtown on land rented from Thomas West.(2) While David Isaacs had a direct economic relationship with Thomas West for the few years that he lived in Charlottesville before West's death, he had an even more significant, lasting, and unusual relationship with West's daughter Nancy. Between 1796 and 1817, David Isaacs and Nancy West had seven children together. By the time of David Isaacs's death in 1837 he and Nancy West (who occasionally, though rarely, used Isaacs's last name) had maintained a familial relationship for over forty years and had lived in a single household for seventeen of those years in downtown Charlottesville, where Isaacs owned a mercantile business and West ran a bakery. Between them the couple amassed substantial wealth, and by 1850 Nancy West owned real property valued at $7,000, enough to make her the richest non-white person in Albemarle County.(3)

Interracial sex per se was not illegal in early national and antebellum Virginia, but laws prohibiting interracial marriages had been in place since the colonial era and anti-fornication laws punished all offenders having sex outside of marriage whether or not it crossed the color line.(4) In this legal environment, a stable, successful, and familiar couple like David Isaacs and Nancy West--a relationship that, to us, might seem improbable if not impossible for that era--nonetheless thrived. An investigation of their financial dealings, land transactions, and courtroom encounters provides a rare glimpse at how an interracial couple operated and even prospered within the legal and social boundaries of a Virginia that discouraged their sexual activities and frowned upon their family, but which lacked either the motivation or the power to end their relationship. Examining the lives of exceptional couples at the margins like Isaacs and West is essential to understanding the rules of race, sex, gender, and class in the South before the Civil War--and to appreciating that unusual circumstances like theirs came with rules all their own.

The example of West and Isaacs also reinforces arguments made in the work of recent historians, who have complicated our understandings of racial and sexual relations in the early national and antebellum South with studies of multiracial families, coerced and consensual interracial sex involving both free people and slaves, and the lives of free people of color. Collectively, these scholars have demonstrated that there were significant gaps between the ideals white southerners often projected about themselves and their world and the experience of life on the ground in their society.(5) The story of David Isaacs and Nancy West adds valuable details to this evolving historical portrait of multiracial families and their peculiar positions in early national and antebellum southern communities. In particular, it reveals how intricately and inextricably connected the couple's domestic and financial arrangements were, and how their economic position influenced precisely when members of the white community in Charlottesville chose to revoke the toleration they usually demonstrated for West and Isaacs's relationship. Additionally, West and Isaacs's story shows their ingenious ability to turn laws of race, gender, marriage, and property designed primarily for legally married white couples to their distinct pecuniary advantage. What stands out most about Isaacs and West's sexual association is that, relative to the law, it was less directly oppositional than it was startlingly ambiguous. For example, when the couple altered their domestic arrangements around 1820, they threatened both the moral sensibilities and the economic interests of some whites. When they were subsequently accused of violating Virginia's laws against illicit sex, however, not even the highest court in the state would find them susceptible to criminal prosecution. Cautiously, at some risk, but with a consistent strategy, David Isaacs and Nancy West exploited their unique status by sneaking through legal loopholes, thus ensuring both their own economic stability and the financial futures of their children.

Still, no matter how financially successful they became, nearly being branded as criminals reminded them that they were perpetually vulnerable to legal harassment by whites. Although West and Isaacs never faced the possibility of criminal charges again, the same kinds of jealousy and resentment toward the couple's economic stature that provoked their original legal troubles seethed well into the 1840s. They learned that there would always be some whites who would try to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the couple's relationship in pursuit of their own economic gain. Rather than indicating the strength of interracial families in Virginia before the Civil War and the protections afforded to them, the experience of Nancy West and David Isaacs actually highlights the ultimate fragility and tenuousness of their status. That the couple managed to evade each obstacle placed before them is a testament not only to their shrewdness, intelligence, and foresight, but also to their enormous luck. Property and wealth can bring power, stability, and security. They can also provoke envy, greed, and hostility. For Nancy West and David Isaacs, they brought both.

On October 11, 1822, the grand jury sitting at the Albemarle County Court, on evidence provided by two witnesses, presented David Isaacs and Nancy West for "umbraging the decency of society and violating the laws of the land by cohabitating together in a state of illicit commerce as mall and wife."(6) There are no extant descriptions of the testimony that brought about the presentment, but presumably the most germane facts were simply that the couple lived in the same house and acted as a married couple. Nineteen months later, on May 13, 1824, the court found the facts of the evidence against Isaacs and West to be true and asked the couple to show cause why Jonathan Boucher Carr, the local commonwealth's prosecuting attorney, should not bring an indictment against them for the crime of fornication. West and Isaacs's lawyer argued that, even conceding the facts in the presentment, the language used by the Grand Jury failed to accuse the couple of violating any particular statute, and he questioned whether the state could prosecute them on a fornication charge at common law. This legal strategy baffled the county court. Uncertain "whether, admitting the facts presented by the Grand Jury to be true, an Information will lie for the said offence at the suit of the Commonwealth," the court determined the case had to be sent to the General Court in Richmond for decision. West and Isaacs objected, probably because they hoped the County Court would dismiss the case on the spot, but were overruled.(7) In November 1826 their case finally worked its way onto the docket of the General Court in Richmond, where the justices ruled that the state of Virginia could not prosecute David Isaacs and Nancy West on any charge as presented by the grand jury.(8) On May 8, 1827, nearly five years after the original presentment, the Albemarle County Court dismissed all cases against Isaacs and West.(9)

The two witnesses who appeared before the grand jury in 1822 would have had to have been white, because David Isaacs was not black and Virginia law only allowed the testimony of people of color against other people of color. A fire in 1865 burned nearly all the original case papers of the General Court, precluding any precise knowledge of the witnesses' identities, but even without such specific information it seems extraordinarily curious that anyone would air a sexual grievance against Isaacs and Nancy West in 1822. Charlottesville was a small town with just 260 residents in 1810, and it had grown little by the early 1820s. Much of the town's population lived within a few blocks of the couple.(10) By 1822 a significant percentage of Charlottesville's residents must have known that David Isaacs and Nancy West were carrying on a long-term sexual relationship. The couple had already had all seven of their children, the oldest of whom (their daughter Jane) was twenty-six years old. Clearly Isaacs and West were in long-standing violation of anti-fornication laws that prohibited sexual intercourse between unmarried persons, yet for more than twenty-five years no one had chosen to do anything about it.

David Isaacs's own economic clout, along with that of his network of business colleagues (many of whom were also prominent in local social and legal circles), might have prompted hesitation among people tempted to complain publicly about his relationship with West. Isaacs was a successful merchant and an esteemed member of the local business community. Among his associates were merchants John Kelly, John Winn, Twyman Wayt, James and Samuel Leitch, and John R. Jones, all of whom had been appointed by the county court during the 1810s to assist him in his capacity as executor of the will of his brother Isaiah, who had died in 1806.(11) Kelly, "a man of sterling integrity and a decided christian gentleman," was a founder of the town Presbyterian church in the 1820s. Winn owned the enormous Belmont estate, traded in real estate, and served for a time as town postmaster, a position in which he was succeeded by Twyman Wayt. John Jones, who was later noted for his exceptionally "energetic and industrious life," served as a county magistrate beginning in 1819, acted as the financial agent for numerous local planters, and eventually became the first president of the Albemarle branch of the Farmers' Bank of Virginia.(12)

David Isaacs also counted Opic Norris and Alexander Garrett among his close friends in town, naming both as co-executors of his own will.(13) Norris drew especial respect from Charlottesville residents, one of whom wrote after his death that he was "a man of mark ... as useful and beneficial to this community as any man that ever lived here." A merchant who also served as a county magistrate, Norris was a town trustee for many years, secretary-treasurer of a local turnpike company, and at one point in his life the owner of a blacksmith shop as well as a popular tavern. Garrett, meanwhile, dealt in real estate and spent most of his life in public office, serving as deputy sheriff and then as clerk for both the county and circuit courts. He also became the first bursar of the University of Virginia, married the daughter of one of Thomas Jefferson's nephews, and was named an executor of Jefferson's estate in 1826.(14) In addition to having influential friends in town, Isaacs had prominent customers throughout Albemarle County, not the least of whom was Jefferson himself, who bought all sorts of items from Isaacs ranging from meat, butter, and cheese to books and a horse. Jefferson's nephew, Dabney Carr Jr., had been friends with Isaiah Isaacs, serving as a witness to a codicil of his will. Thomas Jefferson also made purchases from many other local merchants, but the long-standing patronage of prominent planters like him helped establish David Isaacs as a worthy, reputable, and respectable businessman.(15)

As a Jewish immigrant, however, David Isaacs would always be somewhat of an oddity in Charlottesville. Around 2,700 Jews lived in the United States in 1820 out of a total population nearing ten million, and only 300 or so lived in Virginia. A few Jews other than David Isaacs lived in Charlottesville in the early nineteenth century, including merchant Isaac Raphael and lawyer Nathaniel Wolfe, but two-thirds of Virginia's Jewish population lived in Richmond.(16) Being a Jew in antebellum America meant numerical near-insignificance but also often entailed cultural marginality and social prejudice. The anti-Semitism that Jews faced in the antebellum United States paled in comparison to that confronted by Jews in Europe and was tempered by political, economic, and religious tolerance. Nevertheless, bigotry was widespread in America. Throughout the country the word "Jew" was used both as a generic pejorative and specifically as a synonym for a cheat. Overt hostility and violence toward Jews was rare, but white Christian churches consistently preached that Judaism was an inferior religion. Jews were unusual and therefore exotic and interesting, but most gentiles also viewed Jews suspiciously and stereotypically as untrustworthy and avaricious. As historian Jacob Marcus writes, early-nineteenth-century Americans were ambivalent toward Jews, and tolerance and acceptance frequently coexisted with rejection and a strong sense of Jewish difference. No matter the precise position of Jews, though, they "resigned themselves to the inevitable; there would always be a dividing line between Jews and Christians."(17)

David Isaacs's position as an outsider among white Christian society may have made his relationship with Nancy West--who, as a free woman of color, was also an outsider--less offensive to other whites than had her partner been a white gentile. In the 1820s most Americans believed Jews were probably racially white, and they were treated as white under Virginia law, but the racial position of Jews was never entirely fixed due to centuries-old European folklore and stereotypes about distinct Jewish physiognomy.(18) In addition, Isaacs's religion certainly distanced him from many of his white Christian neighbors. They might not have expected him to adhere to as high a moral standard as that to which they believed they held themselves. If a distinction of faith helped at all in keeping David Isaacs and Nancy West out of a courtroom, however, such a distinction also meant that regardless of his economic standing, Isaacs could never fully integrate himself into Charlottesville's business and legal communities, which were held together as much by familial as by financial links. Samuel and James Leitch were brothers. John R. Jones's brother-in-law and his first business partner was Nimrod Bramham, another merchant and a man who later became legally entangled with David Isaacs. After parting ways with Jones, Bramham joined fortunes with his son-in-law, William Bibb. John Kelly's son-in-law was none other than Opie Norris, while John Winn and Twyman Wayt were not only partners but had also married two sisters from the same family. John Winn's oldest son Benjamin would grow up to marry the daughter of Ira Garrett, Alexander Garrett's brother.(19) Without access to these sorts of connections, David Isaacs could be deeply immersed in Charlottesville's mercantile world, yet he would never be entirely of it.

It seems most likely, in fact, that one or more of Isaacs's fellow merchants instigated court proceedings against him and Nancy West in 1822. While changes that the couple made to their relationship in 1819 and 1820 may have prompted some complaints to be made on the basis of moral concerns, a closer look at the accusations brought against them suggests that economic interests probably played a significant role as well. Nancy West's economic position suddenly and dramatically improved beginning in 1819. Members of the merchant class frequently shared the same economic concerns, but they were also in competition with one another, which could breed jealousy and vindictiveness, especially when finances got tight. In the wake of the Panic of 1819, merchants who found it very difficult to collect debts owed them even as they tried to pay off debts of their own would have felt particularly vulnerable. Certainly it is not hard to imagine their antagonism toward the economic success of a free woman of color at such a time, especially when they perceived her as having procured that success in large part through an illegal sexual relationship with a white man. Perhaps the local mercantile elite felt that it was time to remind the couple that they lived free of social and legal harassment mostly at the behest of the white community, and that there were limits to what they could and could not do.(20)

During most of the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Isaacs and West carried on their relationship and continued to have children while living in separate homes and owning their own independent businesses. In 1799 Nancy West turned seventeen. Able to convince Thomas Bell to forward the forty pounds left to her by her father, she purchased a half-acre of land--lot number 46 near Charlottesville's southern boundary--from her brother, James Henry West (see map). She probably took up regular residence there around the time she turned twenty-one in 1803 and began raising her family and establishing herself professionally as a baker.(21) Isaacs himself lived just one block north and one block west on his own land on Main Street, lot 36, which he had purchased in 1802. A two-story wooden building on the property served both as his home and his mercantile store.(22) On the 1810 census, Nancy West and David Isaacs are listed as heads of different households. Isaacs lived alone, and West lived with five other free people of color, four of whom were probably the children she and Isaacs had at the time--Jane, Thomas, Hays, and Tucker.(23)

This arrangement began to change beginning late in 1819. In December Nancy West put the land she lived on up for sale.(24) Six months later she purchased the bulk of lot 33, which was on Main Street just a few lots east of where David Isaacs lived, and she began renting out the property to assorted businesses.(25) In addition, the 1820 census reveals that Nancy West was no longer the head of a household, but that David Isaacs suddenly had ten free people of color living in his home. As many as eight of these individuals were Nancy West and the couple's children, who now totaled seven after the births of Frederick, Julia Ann, and Agness between 1812 and 1817. West began running her bakery out of this building as well, next to David Isaacs's store-front.(26) Less than two years later, the grand jury brought its presentment against the couple. For more than twenty years after they had their first child together, then, David Isaacs and Nancy West had maintained separate households; technically, they even lived in separate parishes of Albemarle County.(27) It seems that so long as the couple kept their relationship a strictly illicit one and pretended that it did not exist, Charlottesville's white community was willing to let it go unchallenged. Only when the couple started living together as a single family unit did some members of the community find their arrangement unacceptable. Throughout the early national and antebellum periods, interracial sexual activity, especially between a slaveowner and his female property but also between free people, could generally be tolerated so long as certain proprieties were observed, one of which was never to flaunt such relationships as if they were legitimate. West and Isaacs's sudden public pretense to being a family thus probably played a role in provoking the charges against them. When the grand jury presented Isaacs and West, it also presented two other couples (at least one of which was also interracial and cohabitating) for fornication charges, which suggests that their case may have been part of a small crusade by whites intent on rooting out sexual relationships that represented, in the words of Albemarle County judge Archibald Stuart, offenses "against good morals."(28)

Probably not coincidentally, the other interracial couple, Joshua Grady and Betsy Ann Farly, lived on lot 26, property owned by David Isaacs just two blocks west of where he lived with Nancy West. Grady was a white blacksmith and Betsy Ann Farly was a free woman of color whose father was Daniel Farly, a free man of color. Daniel Farly resided at the east end of Main Street and was himself the oldest son of Mary Hemings, Sally Hemings's older sister. Mary Hemings lived across the street and half a block west of West and Isaacs in a house on lot 23 she had shared with Thomas Bell (formerly Nancy West's legal guardian) from the late 1780s until Bell's death in 1800. Bell had purchased Mary Hemings and her two children by him (Daniel Farly not among them) from Thomas Jefferson at her request in 1792 and informally freed her. By 1822 Mary Hemings also lived with her and Bell's daughter Sally Jefferson Bell and Sally's husband Jesse Scott, a man descended from whites and Native Americans. A number of Isaacs and West's children would later marry into the Hemings family as well. When Isaacs and West began living together, then, they not only presented themselves to Charlottesville as a legitimate family, but they also bolstered an interracial community on Main Street that had been growing since the eighteenth century. Their presence may have brought the size of that community to a critical mass that finally provoked one or more Charlottesville whites to take action against it by striking at its newest and therefore most vulnerable members.(29)

It is impossible, however, to discount the significance of Nancy West's improved economic position, which was coterminous with her new living arrangements. Before 1819 she had been marginalized within the Charlottesville community spatially, socially, and economically. West was a free woman of color who owned property and a business, and who carried on a sexual relationship with a white man, but at least she was peripheral to the public gaze. She may have lived just a few blocks from David Isaacs, but her land sat at the edge of town. As late as 1820 her original property, including the structures on it, was valued at only $400, at a time when most lots nearer the courthouse, even those just a block closer, were worth at least three times that amount. Before 1820 Nancy West posed no serious or visible threat, literally or figuratively, to the economic standing of other members of the white community. After that year, however, she not only lived openly as the wife of a white man, but she was accumulating capital and occupying valuable, centrally located real estate alongside other whites. The lot Nancy West purchased on Main Street in 1820 was practically across the street from her original location, but it was worth nearly $1,900, which represented economic strength on a completely different scale than that she had previously enjoyed.(30)

For some Charlottesville residents, then, Nancy West and David Isaacs had crossed the boundaries of acceptability in numerous ways--not least of which was economic--and it was time to call them to account for it. The Albemarle County grand jury, however, seemed confused as to how to proceed against West and Isaacs, a confusion that was especially apparent in their failure to specify the precise nature of the charges they wanted the court to bring against the couple. The language of the presentment alleged that the couple violated "the laws of the land," but it contained what appeared to be contradictory accusations. On the one hand, Isaacs and West supposedly had committed the crime of engaging in the "illicit commerce" of a sexual relationship outside of marriage, with the legal implication that they were in violation of anti-fornication statutes. Yet simultaneously, according to the presentment, the offensiveness of their relationship lay in their "cohabitation as man and wife"; that is, acting as if they were married. Given their respective races, this phrasing could be interpreted as an accusation of another crime altogether, namely that of racial intermarriage.

In its opinion on West and Isaacs's case delivered in November 1826, the General Court refused to entertain such vagaries of the presentment. In a case it had only recently decided, the court held that a single act of fornication could not be prosecuted at common law without other circumstances which in and of themselves would qualify as misdemeanors.(31) If, for example, a couple had sexual intercourse in public, the court argued that it "would be indeed an enormous indecency, and so grossly offensive and shocking to the feelings of society, as to entitle it to severe legal animadversion." Such circumstances, though, did not attend to West and Isaacs's case, and the Albemarle County grand jury never claimed that they had. The General Court suspected that the grand jury had included language about the couple living together to intimate that by sharing a household, the couple made their offense against society particularly outrageous. The grand jury presumably meant to imply that, insofar as the nature of their relationship had become so obvious, West and Isaacs had "aggravate[d] its malignity." For their part, however, the justices of the General Court felt that the facts that the couple "occupied the same chamber, ate the same board, and discharged towards each other the numerous common offices of husband and wife" were "in themselves harmless and inoffensive." In short, the court determined that a couple living together as husband and wife could not be said to be acting contrary to public morals. At least at common law, anti-fornication statutes could be used to punish flagrant and public acts of sexual indiscretion, but not (regardless of a lack of formal validation from the state) a marriage-style relationship. If the Albemarle County grand jury wanted to try and charge Nancy West and David Isaacs with violating the state law against fornication, which technically had nothing to do with the egregiousness of the circumstances surrounding the sexual behavior, it could try. Under the presentment before the court, however, the justices ruled that the couple had committed no recognizable crime.(32)

In part, the leniency shown to West and Isaacs can be explained by the specifics of their case as it related to the judicial interpretation of the common law, the principles of which easily gave the General Court a defensible rationale for not punishing an interracial couple guiltless of either flagrantly fornicating or of being legally married. The Albemarle County grand jury badly bungled its presentment against the couple, partially because the white community as a whole had failed to do anything about West and Isaacs for so long. Whites in Charlottesville had allowed the couple to carry on their relationship unchallenged so long as the couple did not pretend it was legitimate. Once Isaacs and West did suggest legitimacy by their new living arrangement, however, it was too late to find a court that would do anything about it. Also, while the presentment ostensibly attacked violations of both racial and sexual mores, it effectively attacked neither. To claim there had been a criminal violation of the racial order meant acknowledging the semblance of marriage in which West and Isaacs lived, but to attack the violation of the sexual order required challenging that very acknowledgment. In other words, Nancy West and David Isaacs either could be married or could be fornicators, but they could not be both. The General Court, presented with this legal and social conundrum, chose to leave the relationship as it was.

Still, even though the General Court rejected the validity of the charge against West and Isaacs on reasonable grounds, the couple had escaped mostly on a technicality. In other cases involving interracial sex, high courts across the South did sometimes demonstrate a willingness to override common law traditions to express their own or the community's disgust. Had sex across the color line truly appalled the justices of the General Court, surely they could have broadened the interpretation of common law to envelop the Charlottesville case and thereby closed the loophole that enabled even the most thinly veiled interracial sexual relationships to go unchecked. That they refused to do so in part suggests a judicial lack of motivation to take action against sexual activity between white men and black women in Virginia, especially when conducted entirely in private. More specifically, there were relationships like that of Isaacs and West all across Virginia, some of which surely involved more prominent individuals than a Jewish merchant from a small hinterland town. Had the justices deemed interracial sex behind closed doors susceptible to prosecution in this instance, no one could predict how many other white men might be exposed to similar charges.(33)

The decision of the General Court still begs the question of why the grand jury did not present the couple as being in violation of some specific statute. Surely a statutory case, either for fornication or for interracial marriage, might have had a better chance of success. Prosecuting the couple for violating the statute against interracial marriage would have done the most severe damage to West, Isaacs, and their family together. In 1822 the white party to an interracial marriage faced six months in jail and a $30 fine, and any member of the clergy performing a marriage ceremony between people of different races had to pay a fine of $250.(34) But proving a charge of interracial marriage here probably would have proved exceedingly difficult. There is no evidence West and Isaacs ever married, and given the potentially severe legal repercussions of such an act it would have been foolish for them to have done so. Additionally, their marriage would have been a violation not only of state law but of Jewish law as well, since Nancy West was not Jewish.

It is worth observing that, even if the couple had been married, ambiguities surrounding Nancy West's status might have made it difficult to bring a case of a racial nature against her and Isaacs. To be defined as mulatto under Virginia law in 1822, a person had to have at least "one-quarter" African ancestry.(35) Nancy West's father, Thomas West, was white. To use the fractional language of the time, his daughter therefore would have been, at most, "half-black." But perhaps she was even less than that. Whites in her community certainly appear to have known her ancestry, and in numerous documents she is described as a "free mulatto woman." Yet when she registered as a free person of color with the county court in 1837, she was described as being of "light complexion."(36) Her brother James legally married a white woman, Susannah Harlow, in Albemarle County in 1794, suggesting that his (and Nancy's) mother's racial ancestry may have been mixed enough for her children with a white man to become legally white.(37) Had a case of interracial marriage been brought against West and Isaacs, then, proving conclusively that West fell within the guidelines of the racial definition statute making her a mulatto, while possible, might have been complicated. Once the "blood" aspect of her racial identity became an admissible legal question, then how the white community treated her would have played a role in further determining her status. At least two of her children were educated with white children in local schools, and one local man testified in a separate lawsuit that her nieces and nephews were "esteemed, received and accepted as white men, were educated with white children and required to perform and did perform Militia and other duties, required only of white men, and allowed to intermarry without objection on the score of blood, with white women."(38) Perhaps a case could be made that Nancy West, too, was effectively a white woman. In antebellum Virginia, race may have been fixed according to law, but it was far more malleable in practice. It has become a standard trope of historical treatments of race that the category itself is a fiction, constructed and reconstructed socially, legally, culturally, economically, and in a multitude of other ways. While the limitations of the public record make it difficult to speculate about how Nancy West and her family envisioned their own racial identities, West's color, ancestry, and local standing all would have complicated the possibility of using race against her in a prosecution for racial intermarriage.(39)

Proving a statutory case of fornication, on the other hand, should have been relatively easy and straightforward. That the couple had had sexual intercourse was evident, and even the General Court conceded that, given the evidence presented by the grand jury, "the existence of a statutory offence may be inferred."(40) It is not entirely clear why the Albemarle County grand jury chose not to pursue a charge based on the infraction of the anti-fornication statute. Possibly it was just a tactical legal mistake, but perhaps the grand jury wanted to use its presentment to express a broader sense of moral outrage than was suggested by the language of the fornication statute, which included nothing specifically about race. From this perspective, trying to bring West and Isaacs up on charges was less about punishing them than about publicly rebuking and humiliating them with a reminder that although they might consider their family legitimate, the white community did not.

Ultimately, even if West and Isaacs had been found guilty of violating anti-fornication laws, their punishment would have been mild, just a ten-dollar fine.(41) Despite the revulsion that white Virginians expressed publicly toward sex across the color line, there was very little the law could do to stop it. Since West and Isaacs were not married and there were no laws specifying penalties for interracial sexual acts of any sort, no one really could prevent the couple from living together and building a family--unless the community was literally willing to run them out of town. When confronted with interracial sexual relationships, however, whites in Charlottesville, like whites in general across the state before the Civil War, seem to have had no inclination to take such extreme action.(42) Even if some people were so inclined, West and Isaacs probably had enough support from other members of the white community to prevent it. More than anything else, the charges against Nancy West and David Isaacs demonstrate that their family was always vulnerable to legal harassment and that its legitimacy could always at least be called into question. The case brought against them was mostly a psychological ploy, intended to anger and instill insecurity precisely at a time when West, Isaacs, and their children were trying to build a new sense of familial intimacy by sharing a household. Ironically, with its decision the General Court effectively, if not legally, recognized the relationship of David Isaacs and Nancy West as what we might call a common-law marriage. No statutory case of fornication was ever made against them, but living under the duress of pending criminal charges for nearly five years may well have wrought psychological damage against the couple and their family nonetheless.

Surely David Isaacs and Nancy West knew that attempting to live together and establish adjacent businesses openly as husband and wife might arouse the hostility of some of their neighbors and possibly even invite criminal prosecution. The question remains why they made such a move despite this awareness. Certainly Isaacs and West wanted to live together with their children because they were a family. Moreover, immediate practical concerns may have played a role, since David Isaacs's house was much bigger than Nancy West's, which may have been very cramped with so many children--at least two of whom, Jane and Thomas, were themselves actually adults--trying to live in it along with their mother. In fact, between 1802 and 1833, David Isaacs added one-story wings onto either side of his home, no doubt in part to make room for the increasing number of residents.(43) Yet it is clear that the couple also had long-term concerns about their family's economic stability and security, concerns that could be alleviated considerably through their new arrangement. Solidifying their relationship as domestic partners was part of a conscious effort to strengthen the security of their respective--and subsequently, their collective--finances. That they did so successfully solely because of the illegality of their relationship could only have antagonized their white accusers even more.

By 1820, if David Isaacs's economic position was established, it was not necessarily stable. As a merchant, if he were smart and careful he could prosper, but the assumption of debt and extensions of credit that accompanied his enterprise also entailed a great deal of risk. Misfortune or carelessness could produce financial ruin. David Isaacs was very familiar with the vagaries of the market, having sued at least seven different people for debt between 1810 and 1822 alone.(44) However, in addition to the uncertainties inherent to his business, David Isaacs faced other potential threats to his financial stability. When his brother Isaiah died in 1806, he had left behind not only his estate of real and personal property but also four young children, for whom David Isaacs took primary responsibility. Although two of Isaiah's children had died by the early 1820s, David Isaacs's entanglement of his own financial affairs with those of his deceased brother and his surviving niece and nephew made his economic situation even more precarious than that of other merchants.(45) With no bankruptcy laws in Virginia in the 1820s, what a man in David Isaacs's position needed perhaps more than anything else was a form of insurance--some sort of knowledge that he had somewhere to turn for support and assistance should catastrophe befall him.

As a free person of color, Nancy West also needed security above anything else. In some ways, by 1819 she was fortunate. Both capital and land were typically beyond the reach of free blacks in Virginia, most of whom lived in dire poverty at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Free women of color in particular confronted severely restricted employment opportunities, but throughout her life, Nancy West had been able to rely on white male patrons--her father, Thomas Bell, David Isaacs--to help shield her from trying economic circumstances. Still, her relationship with Isaacs was tenuous to the extent that it was not recognized by law, meaning that she could be assured of Isaacs's protection only so long as he lived. Despite having some of her own resources, had David Isaacs died anytime before 1819, Nancy West would have been left very heavily dependent on his estate for survival. The debts inevitably accrued by Isaacs as a merchant and as an executor would have to be paid in the event of his death. There was therefore no guarantee that West could rely on inheritance for financial stability.(46)

Nancy West's financial interests, in turn, were inextricable from those of her children, for if she could not survive economically, neither could they. Free women of color frequently had to rear their families alone, since they generally outnumbered free black men and were usually too poor to purchase enslaved spouses. Again, West was in a privileged position in this regard so long as David Isaacs lived, but in 1819 he was nearly sixty years old and had five children with West who were still under age thirteen. Jane Isaacs, the couple's oldest daughter, was twenty-three and a milliner, enabling her to assist her mother both financially and as a secondary caregiver if necessary, but without Isaacs's support the entire family would have to struggle like so many other free families of color.(47) In addition to their individual interests, then, David Isaacs and Nancy West shared collective concerns regarding their children. Together they faced the anxieties of continuing to support their offspring until they all reached maturity, as well as of guaranteeing the security of their children's futures as they came of age.(48)

The structure of Isaacs and West's relationship after 1819 nicely served their mutual financial interests and concerns. For David Isaacs, having Nancy West by his side both domestically and economically meant that he had some financial security should disaster strike. He could rely on her as an outside source of capital to vouch for him, provide security in case of debt, and even support him if he went completely bankrupt. Living, working, and owning land alongside David Isaacs, meanwhile, operated to Nancy West's distinct advantage as well. She not only gained access to greater wealth and potential income, but, more significantly, to some degree of independence. If anything were to happen to David Isaacs after these maneuvers, Nancy West was now assured of having sufficient means to support herself. This improved financial relationship also served the interests of the couple's children. If Isaacs lost his money or died or both, West was in a better position to support the couple's children as they grew, and by helping her to increase her wealth and landholdings over time, it allowed West to pass some or all of that property on to her children as they got older and needed financial footholds of their own.

Throughout her life Nancy West always acquired land from members of her own family or that of David Isaacs, and Isaacs himself repeatedly facilitated West's economic mobility by actively helping to ensure that she had significant resources independent of his own wealth. The lot West bought in downtown Charlottesville in 1820 was, like the property she procured in 1803, land that had originally belonged to her father. Thomas West had rented the lot to Isaiah Isaacs during his lifetime and bequeathed it in his will to James Henry West's four children, each of whom held one-quarter interest. Between 1817 and 1819 David Isaacs purchased three-quarters of the lot from Nancy West's nieces and nephews. Just over a year later, Isaacs sold his entire share to Nancy West for $600, who herself purchased the final quarter from her niece Susannah in 1823.(49) By the time West bought Isaacs's portion of the property in 1820, she had sold her land on the outskirts of town to a free man of color named William Spinner for exactly $600, but there had been legal complications in the exchange. Consequently, she had not yet received any payment for that land, and would not until 1829.(50) She was earning her own money as a baker, but it still seems unlikely that West would have had $600 saved from her own income alone to pay Isaacs for the land. Instead, it appears that David Isaacs purchased most of the land in pieces, specifically for the purpose of then transferring it to Nancy West, with her purchase money then either given or loaned by him. At the very least, it was an unusual exchange, one made much easier for West by Isaacs's intervention. In his will, despite the fact that he had already sold the land legally to West, Isaacs made a specific point of relinquishing "all the right, title, interest, claim or demand" he had in the plot. Presumably this was to be certain that no one would question the land transfer or suggest that Nancy West's land was in reality still owned in any way by Isaacs or paid for with his funds. It was important that anyone who asked know that this property belonged exclusively and entirely to Nancy West.(51)

In 1824 West paid $400 for the northern half of another lot, number 19, directly across the street from the land she had bought in 1820. By this time it is certainly possible that she had enough money saved both from her business and from rents and profits collected on her property to conduct the transaction entirely on her own accord.(52) Still, David Isaacs mediated this exchange as well, since the seller was his nephew Hays Isaacs, for whom David continued to be partially responsible as executor of his brother's will.(53) David Isaacs no longer needed to be a financial backer for West, but this familial connection gave her privileged access to a land purchase she might not have had otherwise. Finally, in 1827 West purchased another Charlottesville property, lot 25, directly from Isaacs, who had bought it from a member of the Taliaferro family, who had purchased it from the estate of Thomas West.(54) David Isaacs did not have to sell land to Nancy West at all. But the couple astutely realized that dividing accumulated wealth between them ultimately was more stable and secure than simply aggrandizing Isaacs's estate. The only other time Nancy West ever came into land ownership was when David Isaacs bequeathed her in his will partial interest in his property, some of which she eventually purchased outright from his estate.(55)

Obviously, every free family, white or black, worried about the state of its finances, and many of both races kept property ownership within their extended families. In this respect there was nothing especially unusual about David Isaacs and Nancy West.(56) The couple was unusual, however, because even as antebellum Virginia law deprived them of an official marriage, they were not only effectively married but the law gave them an ability to stabilize their finances and hedge against economic peril that few white couples could ever have. In most Virginia families, married women had practically no authority to hold or dispose of property until 1877. Instead, by law every wife became a feme covert, meaning that upon marriage a woman surrendered ownership of all her personal and real property to her husband. A husband could not sell his wife's real estate entirely at will, but he was entitled to use it as he chose and keep all profits derived from it. That same property, though, could then be lost by both parties to a marriage in the event that creditors came calling. One of the few ways for a married woman to retain any property rights was to have a trust established for her in equity by someone else (usually by her father)--but almost invariably a trust came with conditions that precluded the full range of its use. The legalities of trusts were so complicated that, over time, the equity system yielded increased litigation.(57)

Yet because of the unusual nature of their relationship, Nancy West and David Isaacs effectively circumvented and subverted the restrictions of the Virginia property laws. West could never claim a dower right in Isaacs's estate as a legally married woman might, but since she and Isaacs were not married she eluded the restrictions of coverture. Even more valuable than a dowry, perhaps, she could own her own property outright without interference or conditions on its use and thus did not need the protection for women that a dowry provided. Race and gender barriers in antebellum Virginia may have limited Nancy West's ability to accumulate real estate and other forms of wealth, but, with regard to property rights, Virginia law actually made Nancy West's position stronger precisely by the means it attempted to restrict her. She was a free woman of color who, specifically because she was "married" (in fact but not in law) to a white man, had more economic independence, strength, and mobility than nearly any married white woman. Furthermore, while white families could protect a married woman's property from creditors through equity, the delimited conditions of its use restricted the free flow of capital both for families and the larger society, and almost always precluded strategies of cooperation that might otherwise maximize a couple's and their family's economic potential through more flexible and collective uses of capital. Nancy West and David Isaacs were not bound by any such fetters. Many white couples, in fact, may have wished they could have enjoyed the economic dynamics of this relationship. In fact, it may have been especially galling to them that West and Isaacs could structure their financial lives so advantageously even as (and, ironically, because) they lived and worked together but stayed unmarried.(58)

West and Isaacs's financial arrangements would be put to the test even before the General Court handed down its opinion in the state's case against the couple. In the spring of 1826 a number of Charlottesville merchants sued Isaacs for debts they believed he owed them in his capacity as executor of his brother's will. By the mid-1830s over half a dozen Charlottesville business owners sued Isaacs in three different lawsuits that dragged on through the courts for twenty years, past the time of Isaacs's death. As the suits progressed, the various plaintiffs demonstrated their willingness to use West and Isaacs's relationship against them in order to head off their defense. That they tried at all demonstrates again how white men in conflict might use evidence of an interracial sexual relationship instrumentally, as a means of attack in pursuit of a larger goal. That they failed reinforces the notion that while whites might have some success in harassing an interracial couple by using the law, they had greater difficulty in using it to produce more tangible consequences.

When David Isaacs's nephew Hays Isaacs turned twenty-one in February 1824, he came into his full inheritance from his father Isaiah. It seems he celebrated by going on a spending spree, mostly in Charlottesville. Local merchants and tradesmen familiar with both the young man and his financial situation willingly extended him credit, and Hays accumulated debts at numerous establishments totaling well over $1,000. Unfortunately, Hays was a financially inexperienced and irresponsible young man, more comfortable with buying and spending than with saving and accounting. By the end of 1824 some of the Charlottesville merchants tried to collect, only to have Hays refuse to pay, claiming he had no money. Nimrod Bramham and William Bibb consequently sued him for debt in Richmond, where he had also purchased some items from that branch of Bramham and Bibb's mercantile firm. In March 1826 a court in Henrico County ruled in favor of the plaintiff, at which point Hays Isaacs promptly left Virginia and never returned.(59)

Just a month later Joel Yancey, another Charlottesville merchant, filed suit in chancery in Albemarle County against David Isaacs. Yancey believed that David Isaacs, as the executor of Isaiah Isaacs's estate, still held a large sum of money for Hays Isaacs. Since Hays owed Yancey more than $400 but was unable or unwilling to pay his debts (and for that matter, could not even be located), Yancey's suit maintained that David Isaacs ought to be held responsible for paying his nephew's creditors. In June 1826 the merchant John R. Jones, who owned a store directly across the street from Isaacs and Nancy West, filed a lawsuit similar to Yancey's, and their cases were eventually joined together. In 1830 Bramham and Bibb, along with five other men to whom Hays owed money, sued David Isaacs as well.(60)

John R. Jones filed a statement that detailed his individual claims but also spoke to the complaints all the creditors had about how Isaacs had administered his nephew's inheritance. Hays Isaacs had signed away to David Isaacs all claims to his inheritance very soon after he came of age. Jones argued, however, that Isaacs had hurried his nephew--who in any event was "totally without experience" in analyzing financial accounts--through the release process, even paying an attorney $100 just to get Hays's signature quickly. David Isaacs, Jones alleged, had mishandled the accounting for his brother's estate and wanted to procure his nephew's release "for the purpose of closing the door to any investigation" into the accounts. Furthermore, Jones claimed that David Isaacs knew that Hays had amassed substantial debts. By getting Hays to relinquish his rights the elder Isaacs hoped to avoid having to fulfill his nephew's obligations and instead keep what remained of Hays's inheritance himself. Jones demanded that Hays's debts to him be paid from David Isaacs's accounts.(61)

Isaacs responded in March 1827. First, he argued that he had never wanted to be his brother's executor at all. The other men named as executors had "declined incurring the trouble and responsibility." As Isaiah's only brother and closest relative David Isaacs felt a "sacred duty" to take the job on himself, but he claimed he "indulged no hope or expectation" that it would be "either safe or profitable to him." Isaacs further claimed that he had never cheated his nephew out of what rightfully belonged to him. He explained that Hays "was and had been unsettled and itenerant [sic]" and was considering leaving Virginia when he turned twenty-one. In addition, the accounts of Hays's inheritance suggested to both uncle and nephew that when Hays came of age, the amount being held for him would be roughly equivalent to bills that still had to be paid and to money owed David Isaacs in his capacity as executor. Consequently, they had mutually agreed that Hays would release his claims and let his uncle work out the details. David Isaacs insisted that the $100 paid to his attorney was for services accumulated over time and not merely to obtain Hays's signature, as Jones's suit alleged. Furthermore, he had wanted to make a final settlement of Hays' s accounts because he feared he might become responsible for the young man's future entanglements and possibly suffer "loss and, probably, great injustice." Rather than using any "undue means" to procure Hays's release, trying to swindle his nephew, or avoid investigation, David Isaacs contended that he had tried to end his financial connection to Hays precisely so he would never have to face the kind of lawsuit he now confronted. So far as he was concerned, his dealings with Hays Isaacs and his inheritance were complete, and he maintained that he could not be held responsible for any additional debts Hays had incurred.(62)

Witness testimony in the case centered on two issues. The first was Hays Isaacs's alleged incompetence concerning financial matters. V. W. Southall, David Isaacs's lawyer, testified that Hays had seemed satisfied with his uncle's handling of his accounts. Although he did not know Hays very well, Southall believed Hays seemed capable of making his own financial decisions, but he conceded that Hays did not "take time to examine the items composing the account." The merchant Isaac Raphael testified that Hays would not do blindly whatever David Isaacs told him to, but that Hays was also not "capable of investigating complicated accounts and of making judicious contracts about his property." Daniel Keith, Charlottesville's constable, lived one block from David Isaacs and was asked whether he thought Hays capable of handling money or property. Keith answered, "I knew him well. And think him incapable of managing either." Keith also found him generally to be "foolishly extravagant."(63)

As the plaintiffs' lawyer probed these white community members for their assessments of Hays Isaacs, he also hammered away at David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West and their daughter Jane. Opie Norris was asked if Nancy West and Jane Isaacs were "both members of the family" of David Isaacs, "the first in the character of wife, and the second as daughter." Norris, giving an honest but disingenuous answer, probably in an effort to protect his friends, replied that Nancy and Jane lived in Isaacs's house but that he did not know for certain "that Nancy West is the wife of the defendant Isaacs or Jane Isaacs the daughter--only from public rumor." Daniel Keith, meanwhile, said that he knew Nancy and Jane and that "Nancy lives with [David Isaacs] as wife and Jane is called the daughter." Keith, Norris, and Isaac Raphael all also testified that they believed that around the time Hays turned twenty-one Nancy West had purchased his house and land in Charlottesville and that both she and Jane might have received some slaves from him.(64)

David Isaacs and Nancy West had had their fornication charge dismissed just six months prior to the witness testimony in the Yancey and Jones lawsuit, only to find themselves confronted with an antebellum catch-22. Their original legal troubles had them trying to answer the accusation that they were not a legitimate family. Now Yancey and Jones argued that lsaacs's financial transactions were of questionable legality because he and Nancy West were in fact a family. The point of clarifying that David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West was one of husband and wife was never overtly made in the case papers, but the implication was obvious: David Isaacs had taken advantage of his unusual relationship with Nancy West to acquire real and personal property from his nephew for himself. By making West the purchaser, the argument went, Isaacs was trying to avoid the obvious charge of a conflict of interest that might arise had he purchased the property directly, but since West was effectively if not legally Isaacs's wife he could still enjoy the benefits from its use. Similarly, while Jane Isaacs nominally owned some of the slaves once belonging to Hays Isaacs, in reality David Isaacs had merely boosted his own holdings through his daughter's ownership. These transparent ruses, Yancey and Jones suggested, were clear abuses of David Isaacs's power as executor of Isaiah Isaacs's estate. He had exploited his inexperienced nephew's finances for his own personal aggrandizement.

It is impossible to know how well or how poorly Hays Isaacs understood his financial affairs or, for that matter, how much of an effort David Isaacs made to keep his nephew informed. At the very least, numerous aspects of the situation looked suspicious. David Isaacs's own lawyer admitted that Hays hardly looked over his uncle's accounts before relinquishing his claims. That Nancy West and Jane Isaacs purchased land and may have procured slaves from Hays in December 1824, just as Bramham and Bibb were filing a suit against the young man in Richmond, suggests perhaps that David Isaacs and Nancy West indeed colluded to protect Hays's assets from being lost to pay off his debts. These transactions were certainly a conflict of interest for David Isaacs, since even if they were undertaken at some level to protect Hays, any economic improvements in the lives of Nancy West and Jane Isaacs represented improvements in David Isaacs's life as well. Jones and Yancey had a point when they drew attention to the peculiarities of the Isaacs-West family finances.(65)

David Isaacs's own defense offered only weak responses to the accusations made against him. Undoubtedly, he was being honest when he said he wanted to be rid of any financial responsibility for his nephew. Hays's reckless spending placed David Isaacs at enormous risk, and we have already seen how greatly the elder Isaacs valued security. Ultimately, though, David Isaacs's only substantive response to the charges of Hays's creditors was a demand that the letter of the law be upheld. Regardless of what others might think of Hays's fiscal capacities, David Isaacs argued, he had never coerced Hays into signing anything. He and Hays Isaacs had a legally binding agreement between them, and no third party ought to have the authority to challenge its legitimacy. As David Isaacs pointed out in his response to Bramham and Bibb's lawsuit against him, elaborating on an argument made in his response to Yancey and Jones, Hays had never attempted to retract his agreement to the arrangement between them, nor had Hays ever intimated that he believed he might have made a mistake. Consequently, David Isaacs claimed he could not "see the principle of equity which authorizes other and third persons to impugn or question the right and authority of a legatee or distributee ... after their arrival to age, upon considerations sufficient to themselves, to release and acquit an executor or guardian of any claim."(66)

The Albemarle County Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery ruled against David Isaacs on May 16, 1834. Based on its own readings of Isaacs's accounts, the court found that he still owed Hays over $2,500 of his inheritance from Isaiah Isaacs. It ordered that the young man's debts be paid from this sum and that David Isaacs turn over to Hays directly what remained. Essentially, the court accepted the claims of Yancey, Jones, Bramham and Bibb, and Hays's other creditors, all of whose cases the court ruled on together. Hays Isaacs's release to his uncle was technically legal, but the court ruled it could not be construed to have a negative impact on any parties aside from David and Hays. David Isaacs, the court agreed, had procured his nephew's release "as a protection against the claims of the creditors." Additionally, the court took David Isaacs to task for his handling of his nephew's estate, suggesting he had done an injustice to his nephew for his own convenience and probably his own gain. David was not guilty of any criminal activity, but the court asserted that Hays's release was "not founded on an actual settlement, in which every thing is explained; but obtained, as it would seem, with the view of preventing the necessity of such a settlement." The court mentioned nothing about David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West or the financial transactions between her and Hays Isaacs.(67)

David Isaacs immediately looked to appeal the court's verdict. In order to do so, however, he had to have someone post security equivalent to at least double the amount of the judgment issued against him. If Isaacs lost his appeal and then had insufficient funds to fulfill the court's decision, whoever posted security for him would be obliged to pay. Nancy West was available to assist, as was Jane, who now went by Jane West after having married her cousin Nathaniel H. West in 1832. On June 27, 1834, Nancy, Jane, and Nathaniel West all entered into a bond with David Isaacs, Hays Isaacs, and his creditors. The Wests collectively pledged over $7,000 as security, the entirety of their estates. Once again, David Isaacs and Nancy West proved their relationship provided them with financial strength and a degree of mutual reliance unavailable to others. Yet because they derived their strength only from being inextricably connected to one another, their fortunes still rose and fell together. Here, the Wests' gesture entailed enormous risk.(68)

The same day that Isaacs filed his appeal, Hays Isaacs's creditors jointly filed a bill of exceptions with the Albemarle court claiming that the security posted by the Wests was invalid. First, they argued that Nancy West, though a "woman of colour," was "the wife de facto of David Isaacs ... now living, and for many years having lived with the said David Isaacs as his wife, and which connection is notorious in the neighborhood in which they reside." Second, they claimed that any property West claimed to own in reality belonged to Isaacs. She may have purchased the land herself, but they alleged she did so entirely "with the funds of the said David Isaacs." The creditors further tacked on the assertions that Jane West could not enter into a valid contract because she was a feme covert as a result of her marriage to Nathaniel West, and that Nathaniel West, in turn, was himself "notoriously insolvent" and owned no property at all. Taken as a whole, the intent of these objections was to head off David Isaacs's appeal of the judgment against him altogether by accusing him of trying to post security for himself, since all the pledged money really belonged to him. Being from Charlottesville, Hays's creditors knew that David Isaacs's most realistic sources of sufficient security lay in his own family. If they could demonstrate a reason for the court to reject the legitimacy of the Wests' security, David might well be unable to find another person to put up any money in their place. He would have to start paying off his nephew's debts immediately.(69)

Nathaniel and Jane West paid no land taxes in Charlottesville in 1834 and could have only contributed little to David lsaacs's security. The crux of the matter, then, was whether Nancy West actually had any estate legally distinct from that of David Isaacs. The objections specifically addressing her shared the claim that she did not. In the first, the creditors claimed that Isaacs and West lived as husband and wife, and while their relationship could not be recognized in law as a marriage because it crossed the color line, in this instance it ought to be treated as if it were a legitimate union. If Nancy West was therefore a married woman, she could not possibly post security for David Isaacs because her estate was legally his estate. Realizing that these grounds for objection might carry little weight with any court, since the fact remained that the couple could not be and was not legally married, the creditors filed their second objection. Here, they claimed that any property Nancy West appeared to own was merely an illusion designed to conceal David Isaacs's holdings.(70)

Hays Isaacs's creditors had good reason for wanting their money quickly. Whether or not Nancy West actually owned her own property, they had seen how David Isaacs relied on her whenever he got into financial trouble or looked for some economic advantage. What would happen if Isaacs got into additional legal difficulties while he appealed the judgment against him in this case? By the time a court ruled on the creditors' lawsuit, Isaacs and West could lose both their fortunes, leaving the men to whom Hays Isaacs owed money no possibility of collection, at least not without additional legal proceedings. Each of the objections to Nancy West's posting of security was logically sound, and they reflected the effort by Hays's creditors to object on every possible ground. When placed together in a single document, however, the objections were logically inconsistent. In the first objection the creditors asked the court to acknowledge the legitimacy of West and Isaacs's domestic partnership on equal footing with a legal marriage, thereby invalidating