Isaac and his sisters, Fannie and Eva, were reared by their father and grandparents after the death of their mother in 1874. Their home was a small frame house located on Pine Street in a working class neighborhood known as Davis Bottom. The house set right beside a railroad track and across from a lumber yard.
The nine year old boy who stated that he would become the sculptor of busts of "famous Negroes" had nothing in his life that said he would achieve this aspiration other than a natural talent. There were no African-American artists to whom it could look for guidance. The social and educational environment in Lexington would not encourage this pursuit. Later in life, Isaac recounted that the economic situation of the family was such that he had worn his father's army boots to school. His classmates called him "big boots." Yet this child's talent would not be hidden nor diminished by circumstance.
Isaac frequently visited the thoroughbred race and trotting tracks in Lexington not to bet on the horses but to draw and paint them. A news article in 1897 listed the horses he had painted for wealthy patrons of the industries. Only one of the paintings has survived to our knowledge and that is the one of Queen Ban which he completed in 1896. He used the money he earned to help pay his education expenses.
He attended and graduated from Lexington Normal Institute, a school established in 1868 whose teachers were employed by the American Missionary Association. The school later became known as Chandler Normal School.
Isaac became a teacher in 1891 at Keene in Jessamine County. This was a profession that he continued until his retirement in 1966. All the time he taught, he also pursued his other passion which was creating busts of famous "Negroes" and placing them where people could see them. Mr. Hathaway had received advanced training in the arts at the New England Conservatory, Massachusetts and Cincinnati Art Academy, Ohio. He returned to Lexington after his studies and began perfecting his skills. In 1900, he opened his first Studio of Sculpture in a chicken coop behind his birth home. From archival information, it is known that he sculpted his first bust of African-American R.C.O. Benjamin and the mask of Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The year of 1903 seems to have been the pivotal point for his rise to fame and national recognition. Newspaper accounts tell of the depth of his talents and abilities.
The Smithsonian National Museum paid him to make a cast of the Bath Furnace meteorite, one of the largest to have fallen in the Western hemisphere at the time. He requested and was granted permission to take the death mask of Cassius Marcellus Clay, emancipationist and former United States Ambassador to Russia; he later created a heroic-sized bust. Attorney William M. Bullitt of Louisville, Kentucky hired Mr. Hathaway to prepare the physical evidence for the litigation concerning the death of Robert C. Whayne. Isaac meticulously prepared a cast of a sixteen by seven and one-half foot area of the surface and six foot tree trunk. The sculpted evidence gained national attention and helped win a compromise settlement for the family from several insurance companies. In 1904, President Jenkins at Transylvania University asked Mr. Hathaway to sculpt a miniature of the Old Morrison Hall, a land mark building on the campus. The piece was to be shown at the St. Louis Exhibition. A photo of the heroic-size bust of W.C.P. Breckinridge, former United States Congressman, accompanied an article about Mr. Hathaway's work in the local newspaper in 1905.
Near the end of 1907, an opportunity came for Mr. Hathaway to relocate to Washington, D.C. where he and other partners founded the Afro-Art Company. During the years there, he produced twelve inch busts of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, Bishop Richard Allen and Frederick Douglass. His work of the time period was cited in The Artists of Washington, D.C. 1796 - 1996 by Virgil E. McMahan. In November 1914, Mr. Hathaway was commissioned by the National Training School of D.C. to cut in marble a heroic-size profile of Abraham Lincoln. He wrote to Mr. Richard Rathburn, assistant secretary, requesting permission to take a copy of the bronze mask at the Smithsonian Museum. Mr. Rathburn responded that he could make a copy of the mold in the laboratory for his work. Isaac had just completed a seven month period of work with Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, Anthropology Curator at the Smithsonian. (Smithsonian archive record unit 192)
Upon invitations of the colleges, Mr. Hathaway became the founding chair for departments at several southern educational institutions. He moved in 1915 to Pine Bluff, Arkansas to open and chair the Department of Ceramics at Branch Normal (now University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff). He next moved to Tuskegee, Alabama to open and chair the Department of Ceramics in 1937 and finally to Alabama State College in Montgomery in 1947 where he ended his career in 1966. He was offered opportunities to teach at other colleges, but chose to remain at African-American schools because he felt an obligation to educate and train African-American youth.
In his lifetime, he produced over one hundred busts and masks of African-Americans in all disciplines. Mr. Hathaway's sculptures are at Prairie View A&M College, Texas; University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff; Mosaic Templars, Little Rock, Arkansas; Howard University, Washington, D.C.; Grambling State University, Louisiana; Fargo Agricultural School Museum, Brinkley, Arkansas; George W. Carver Museum, Tuskegee Institute, Alabama; Levi Watkins Memorial Learning Center, Alabama; Natchez Cemetery, Mississippi; George Washington Carver High School, Indianapolis, Indiana and Douglass High School, Columbia, Missouri. Other pieces are in private collections throughout the United States.
He has been the only African-American male to be commissioned to design the molds for two United States Commemorative coins honoring African-Americans.
Mr. Hathaway held membership in the American Ceramic Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Alabama Science Association, National Negro Business League, NAACP, YMCA, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Arkansas State Teachers Association, Alabama State Teachers Association, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and Board of Alabama State Christian Churches.
Isaac married Etta Pamplin of Maryland in 1912. She died during childbirth within the first year of their marriage. Their son, Elsmer, died in 1941. Isaac and his second wife divorced. He met and married his third wife, Umer Porter, while at Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1926. She, too, was an artist in her own right. In 1976, she sculpted a bust of Isaac which was placed in the Hathaway/Howard Fine Arts Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. The center had been dedicated in 1969, a year following Isaac's death. 
In Kentucky, Mr. Hathaway had received several honors. In 1947, the Louisville Defender named him one of ten outstanding Kentuckians. He was the eleventh person recognized for his achievements in the poster series of A Gallery of Great Black Kentuckians produced by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. The downtown Lexington Corporation honored Mr. Hathaway with a bronze plaque in their Kentucky Star recognition program in 2005. It was placed in front of the Downtown Arts Center on Main Street, Lexington.
Isaac Scott Hathaway was born April 4, 1872 Lexington, Kentucky and died March 12, 1967 Montgomery, Alabama.
t of the dedication speech was printed in the newspaper along with an account of the ceremony. The monument still stands in the cemetery now known as African Cemetery No. 2.