Philip Norborne Nicholas (ca. 1776–1849), attorney and public official, was the youngest brother of TJ’s friend Wilson Cary Nicholas. Educated at the College of William and Mary, he went on to study law. Governor James Monroe appointed Nicholas attorney general of Virginia and he served from 1800 until he gave up the post in 1819 to become president of the Farmers’ Bank of Virginia. In 1823 he was named to the state’s General Court, a judgeship he held for the rest of his life. Nicholas successively supported the presidential aspirations of William H. Crawford in 1824 and Andrew Jackson in 1828, and he was a Jacksonian Democrat thereafter. He was a delegate to the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829–30 and supported the new constitution that resulted. At his death in Richmond, Nicholas owned personal property valued at $8,492, including at least sixteen slaves (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, repr. 1968, 20 vols. in 10 description ends ; William and Mary Provisional List description begins A Provisional List of Alumni, Grammar School Students, Members of the Faculty, and Members of the Board of Visitors of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. From 1693 to 1888, 1941 description ends , 30; PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, James P. McClure, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 44 vols. description ends , 31:204–5; Daniel Preston and others, eds., The Papers of James Monroe [2003– ], 4:353–4; Richmond Enquirer, 14 Jan. 1819, 21 Aug., 4 Sept. 1849; Leonard, General Assembly description begins Cynthia Miller Leonard, comp., The General Assembly of Virginia, July 30, 1619–January 11, 1978: A Bicentennial Register of Members, 1978 description ends , 353; Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention, of 1829–30 [1830], 882; Hugh Blair Grigsby, “Sketches of Members of the Constitutional Convention of 1829–30,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893–  description ends 61 [1953]: 324; Richmond City Hustings Court Will Book, 12:453–60, 13:80–2; gravestone inscription in Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Richmond).

William Nekervis (d. 1837), banker, may have come to Virginia from Philadelphia. He was a bookkeeper at the Bank of Virginia in Norfolk in 1804, and in 1812 he became cashier of the Farmers’ Bank in Richmond, a position he held until 1836. At his death Nekervis freed his one slave, Henry Patterson, and left him $400 out of a total estate valued in excess of $2,600 (Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania 10 [1832]: 70; Norfolk Gazette and Public Ledger, 4 Sept. 1804; Richmond Virginia Patriot, 20 Oct. 1812; Richmond Enquirer, 12 Aug. 1836; Richmond City Hustings Court Will Book, 7:396–8, 533–41; Lynchburg Virginian, 7 Sept. 1837).

William Bankhead (1795–1873), physician, was the son of TJ’s friend John Bankhead and brother of Charles L. Bankhead, the latter of whom married TJ’s eldest grandchild, Ann C. Randolph. Bankhead inherited Spring Grove, his father’s estate in Caroline County. In 1840 he was living in that county and owned seventy-six slaves. Expressing a desire to move to Missouri, between 1839 and 1851 Bankhead tried several times to sell Spring Grove and adjacent lands totaling approximately 2,500 acres. By 1850 he had relocated to Fredericksburg, where he owned fifty slaves and real estate valued at $25,000. Bankhead moved to Stafford County by 1860, when his personal estate there was valued at $28,000. Three years before his death at Aquia in Stafford County, he owned property there valued at $10,000 (Sarah Travers Lewis Anderson, Lewises, Meriwethers and their Kin [1938], 42; Richmond Enquirer, 21 Mar. 1839, 4 Sept. 1846, 30 May 1851; DNA: RG 29, CS, Caroline Co., 1840, Spotsylvania Co., 1850, 1850 slave schedules, Stafford Co., 1860, 1870; gravestone inscription in Aquia Episcopal Church Cemetery).

Filed with TJ’s papers is an additional memorandum concerning this deed, which reads: “To remove all doubt as to the meaning of the foregoing Deed, I hereby declare that it is meant to extend not only to the note for 4000 dollars for which the said Thomas J. & Bernard are endorsers at the Farmers Bank of Va but to a note of 2500 at said Bank drawn by me endorsed by them, or any which may hereafter be given for a renewal or continuance thereof; and I do agree that this be taken & considered part of the foregoing Deed & deliver it accordingly witness my hand & Seal this day of   1821” (Dft in ViU: TJP-ER; in an unidentified hand; partially dated; with a written representation of a seal at foot of text; endorsed by TJ: “Peyton Bernard”; with TJ’s additional notations beneath endorsement: “Th: Jefferson to Phil. N. Nicholas & William Neckervis” and “July 11. 21. exd deed in trust for Th:J.R. & Bernard Peyton for 781. as + 14 as being the lands bot of Henderson’s heirs to secure them as endorsers of my notes of 2500 + 4000.D. and any further ones they may endorse for me to the Farmer’s bank of Virginia”). This statement was presumably prepared after TJ executed the original version of the above deed in March 1821 and before he decided to incorporate its substance into the revised 11 July 1821 deed rather than execute it separately.