April 2024

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 4                                                         April 2024

 

  In memory of Dan Jordan

DANIEL P. JORDAN, 1938-2024: There’s no doubt in my mind that Saving Monticello would not have been the publishing success it’s been without the generosity and graciousness of Dan Jordan, who led the Thomas Jefferson Foundation from 1985-2008, and could not have been more helpful to me as I researched and wrote the book in the late nineties and after it came out in the fall of 2001. 

Dan, who died at 85 on March 25, and Susan Stein, then as now Monticello’s senior curator, were my guiding lights at the Foundation. 

They always took the time and effort to answer my questions, made great research suggestions, and paved the way for the Foundation’s most-welcome and extremely important support of the book, which continues to this day. 

Among many other things for which I will be eternally grateful, Dan hosted my very first book talk and signing at the old Monticello Visitor’s Center in late October 2001. Dan and Susan were extremely welcoming when we arrived on the mountaintop the afternoon of the talk and at the event itself. I can still see Dan sitting attentively and proudly in the audience.  

Dan regularly wrote to me during the next seven years while he headed the Foundation. That continued after he retired, as he shared always-positive thoughts with me on the book’s success, on this newsletter—which he subscribed to—and on “The Levys of Monticello,” Steven Pressman’s great, award-winning 2022 documentary inspired by my book, in which Dan appeared. That’s him below in the Jefferson Library in a still from the documentary.

Daniel Porter Jordan, Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He was a standout baseball and basketball player at the University of Mississippi, majoring in English and history. He received his BA and his MA in history from Ole Miss, where was elected president of the student body. 

He trained in Army ROTC at Mississippi and went on active duty after getting his MA. After getting out of the Army, Dan earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia in 1970. After that, he taught U.S. History, specializing in the colonial period, at the University Richmond and at Virginia Commonwealth University before accepting the job as the head of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in late 1984. He became the first historian to lead the Foundation. 

You can find lots more details on Dan’s life and work at Monticello in the excellent obituaries by Richard Sandomir in The New York Times and Harrison Smith in The Washington Post at https://bit.ly/NYTJordanObit and https://bit.ly/WPJordanobit

Championing the Levys’ Cause 

I am so thankful to Dan for his steadfast support for my work—and for championing the Foundation’s recognition of the Levy Family’s crucial 89-year stewardship of Monticello. Dan’s advocacy on behalf of the Levys began not long after he accepted the job at the Foundation.   

I told that inspiring story of Dan’s role in recognizing the Levys in Saving Monticello, and it’s worth summarizing here. Dan filled me in on the details when we sat down 25 years ago to discuss how it all came about. He told me that a month after he began his official duties on the mountaintop on January 1, 1985, his friend Saul Viener—a Richmond businessman, biblical scholar, and historian, and the founder of the Southern Jewish Historical Society—wrote to Rabbi Malcolm Stern in Norfolk to relay the news that Dan was the new head of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. 

“A wonderful choice,” he wrote to Rabbi Stern, who did pioneering work in Jewish-American genealogy. “When I phoned him congratulations, he brought up the Levy family!” 

Viener, Stern, Virginius Dabney (the Pulitzer-Prize-winning editor-in-chief of the Richmond Times-Dispatch), and Irving Lipkowitz, a longtime Richmond lawyer who also had championed the Levys, soon thereafter “began working on Jordan,” in Stern’s words. Dan corroborated that when we spoke. 

“Almost immediately after the announcement I started to hear from various Jewish friends—some were imminent scholars and some just had an interest in history—as well as from Virginius Dabney,” Dan said, “all with the same message: namely, that an important story was not being told at Monticello.” 

His friends convinced him. “I looked into it. What I was told was correct," Dan told me. “I went to the [Foundation] Board and asked about it. The Board, I think, was genuinely naive. No one could recall, in their opinions as trustees, any issues or controversies. But all agreed that we needed to find a way to tell an important story.” 

With the blessing of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Dan Jordan led the effort to have the Levys’ role officially recognized at Monticello. The first step was refurbishing the gravesite of Rachel Levy—Uriah Levy’s mother who died at Monticello in 1839 and is buried along Mulberry Row—and placing a plaque there honoring the family. That done, Dan planned a formal re-dedication of the gravesite. 

Rabbi Stern helped the Foundation contact several Levy descendants, and on June 7, 1985, family members and several dozen guests took part in a joyful commemorative ceremony at Monticello. 

Dan welcomed the guests, saying the occasion marked the beginning of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s recognition of the Levys’ “good stewardship” of Monticello. 

“This morning,” he said, “we are pleased to honor the Levy family who, for the better part of a century, owned and preserved this priceless estate, which is perhaps unique in our land for its combination of historic significance and scenic beauty.”

Edgar Bronfman, the head of World Jewish Congress and CEO of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, made the principal address. Bronfman, who owned a large estate in Albemarle County, had agreed to speak at the behest of Saul Viener and Dan Jordan. 

In his remarks, Bronfman focused on Thomas Jefferson and Uriah Levy. Monticello, Bronfman said, “was rescued from destruction by a Jewish-American naval officer whose own fiery independence led him through a highly successful but storm-tossed career in the service of his country.” 

Following a scripture reading by Charlottesville’s Temple Beth Israel’s rabbi, and a prayer from Louis C. Gerstein of New York City’s Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel (the nation’s oldest Jewish congregation where Levy family members worshipped), Levy descendant Harley Lewis unveiled the new plaque (in photo below) at her great-great grandmother’s grave. 

Since that auspicious day, the Foundation has taken many other steps to recognize the Levy family’s important role at Monticello. That includes an exhibit in the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Gallery at the Visitor Center and the updated, illustrated marker at Rachel Levy’s grave. (in photo below).

Rescuing the story of the Levys at Monticello was but one of Dan Jordan’s many other accomplishments as head of the Foundation. As Jane Kamensky, the Foundation’s new president, wrote after his death: 

Dan Jordan “was the most consequential president on the Mountaintop since Jefferson himself. It’s no exaggeration to say that everything we understand about modern Monticello stems from Dan’s long, fruitful, and collaborative tenure as President of the Foundation, for more than thirty years, beginning in 1985. 

“A historian with a deep belief that scholarly excellence must drive visitor experience, he presided over the creation of the [International Center for Jefferson Studies], Getting Word, and the Jefferson Library. He then followed the scholarship where it led: to the acceptance of Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, in many ways the backbone of the interpretations we share today.” 

Ann Lucas, Monticello’s Senior Historian Emerita, has put together a stirring tribute to Dan and his work at Monticello on the Foundation’s website at https://bit.ly/DanJordan  It includes words of remembrance of Dan as a scholar, leader, and as a person from past and present Monticello staff and scholars. I am honored that Ann included my words in that group. 

I proudly repeat my last sentence here: Dan Jordan was, in every respect, a great man. 

EVENTS: Save the date: The pub date for my next book, The Unlikely War Hero, a different kind of Vietnam War POW true story, is December 17. You can get a sneak preview at https://bit.ly/PrePubInfo

I have three in-persons events this month. On Sunday, April 14, I’ll be doing a talk on the Huntland book with the architectural historian Maral S. Kalbian, my indispensable collaborator, at Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., followed by a tour of the Huntland estate, stables, and kennels. It’s a fundraiser for the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area. The event is sold out. 

On Wednesday, April 17, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion. “The Life and Legacy of Francis Scott Key, Class of 1796,” at St. John’s College (FSK’s alma mater) beginning at 7:30 p.m. It’s free and open to the public. Details at https://bit.ly/FSKPanel

On Thursday, April 25, I’ll be doing a talk on the life of Key, based on my biography, What So Proudly We Hailed, at the Glebe Retirement Community in Daleville, Virginia. For more details on these and future events, please check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events 

THE 11^th PRINTING:  My friends at the University of Virginia Press tell me that the paperback Saving Monticello, which the Press began publishing in 2003 after the Simon & Schuster hardcover went out of print, will be going into its 11^th printing. The paperback now is on backorder until physical copies come off the presses.  

In the meantime, if you would like a new paperback of Saving Monticello, I have a few on hand, along with a few as-new used hardcovers.

To order those books, or the recently published hardcover of Huntland, go to this page on my website:

 https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com 

I also have a stack of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

The SM Newsletter on Line: You can read back issues of this newsletter at http://bit.ly/SMOnline

March 2024

 

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 3                                                         March 2024

 

COLLEGE TOPICS: I was doing my usual snooping around online a few weeks ago, looking for hitherto undigitized primary-source material about Monticello during the Levy Family’s ownership (1834-1923), when I saw something promising. The Library of Virginia’s Virginia Chronicle, an online archive of nearly a half million issues of historical Virginia newspapers, had just digitized the University of Virginia’s original student newspaper, College Topics, from its inception in 1890 to 1916.

I immediately went to https://bit.ly/VaChronicle (the site) and began searching for mentions of Jefferson Levy, who owned Monticello during those years—and found several articles on subjects that I’d seen before during my research in other publications—and a few that I hadn’t. 

That latter included a short, two-paragraph item in the January 27, 1909, College Topics (below), that further buttressed what I wrote 23 years ago in Saving Monticello: that Jefferson Levy was, in the newspaper’s words, “a staunch friend of the University.” 

I learned of Levy’s largess to the University when I researched Saving Monticello. Among other things, as I noted in the book, was that in April 1899, in commemoration of Jefferson's birthday, Levy gave the University a large regulator clock for its library, along with two 56-inch steel clock dials for the Rotunda (to replace the originals that had been destroyed in the famed 1895 fire), and a device that electronically controlled the bells in all the University's lecture rooms.

The 1909 article reports that JML would be donating a “splendid” copy of a “famous painting,” St. Paul Before Agrippa (most likely by the 18the century artist Sir James Thornhill) to the University’s Madison Hall, which had been built in 1901 and served as the local YMCA headquarters. 

In the early 20^th century Madison Hall (in the vintage postcard, below), on University Avenue across from the Rotunda, had also become the unofficial U-Va. student union. That august building today houses the office of the University’s President. 

More perusing of the newspaper now known as The Cavalier Daily turned up a slew of ads for the Levy Opera House, the big, three-story Georgia-style brick building on the corner of Park and High Streets in downtown Charlottesville dating from 1852, which Jefferson Levy bought in 1887. A gathering spot for local groups, traveling speakers, and touring theatrical companies known as Town Hall, by the mid-1880s the building had fallen into disrepair and disuse. The entrepreneurial Levy remodeled it and in 1888 renamed it the Levy Opera House. 

In 1891 Jefferson Levy leased the Opera House to Jacob (“Jake”) Leterman and Ernest Oberdorfer, sons of the founders of Charlottesville’s German Reform synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel. Leterman and Oberdorfer brought in symphony orchestras, minstrel shows, and many other types of theatrical productions.

Here are two ads from the November 11, 1893, College Topics filled with details about two typical, late-nineteenth century productions: a road company version of the long-running Broadway musical “The Black Crook,” a retelling of the Faust story; and a touring company’s comedic farce, “Niobe,” involving a marble statue of the Greek mythological figure brought to life after being hit by lightning, which would go to London and have a 500-plus performance run the following year on the city’s West End.

The Levy Opera House, which closed in 1912, later was converted into apartments. Then, in the early 1980s, it was used as office space. Today, as I recently learned from my friend and C’ville native Amoret Bruguiere, more changes are afoot at the Levy Opera House, which most recently had been used as overflow space for the nearby Albemarle County courts complex. 

As we speak, the three-story building, (in the 1960s photo, below), is being renovated and remodeled one more time. When completed in 2027, the Opera House will house the County Commonwealth Attorney’s offices as part of a new, $37-million joint Charlottesville-Albemarle County courts complex. The complex will include both the City of Charlottesville’s and the County’s General District Courts and their offices.

The Opera House will be preserved, and will be getting a new roof to replace the current metal one. All of the exterior brickwork will be restored, and much of the rear wall will be demolished and connected to a new multi-story annex building that will be part of the courts part of the complex (see mockup below).

EVENTS: Subscribers may have noticed that this newsletter has arrived a few weeks later in the month than all the others. That’s because I spent the first half of March finishing my next book, a slice-of-life biography of U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War. 

The new pub date for the book—tentatively titled, The Unlikely War Hero—is December 17. You can get a sneak preview of what the book is about at https://bit.ly/PrePubInfo 

As for events, I have talks scheduled for April and later in the year. For details, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

THE ELEVENTH PRINTING:  My friends at the University of Virginia Press tell me that the paperback Saving Monticello, which the Press began publishing in 2003 after the Simon & Schuster hardcover went out of print, will be going into its eleventh printing. The paperback now is on backorder until physical copies come off the presses.  

In the meantime, if you would like a new paperback of Saving Monticello, I have a few on hand.

To order that book, or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, go to this page on my website https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers and a stack of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

February 2024

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 2                                                         February 2024

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

TELLING JEWISH STORIES: That’s the title of an enlightening talk that Olivia Brown, a full-time tour guide at Monticello and a Historic Interpretation Fellow at Monticello’s Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, livestreamed on January 26. It’s archived online at https://bit.ly/JewishStories

 In her talk Olivia looked at the history of Jewish people associated with Monticello and in Charlottesville during and after Thomas Jefferson’s time, focusing on their relationship with the area’s enslaved population. Naturally, that included Uriah P. Levy’s ownership of Monticello from 1834 when he purchased the property to his death in 1862.

Olivia devoted the last fourth of her hour-long talk to Uriah Levy and details of his ownership of at least 19 enslaved people. She also mentioned Uriah’s brother Jonas Levy (Jefferson M. Levy’s father), his devotion to the Confederate cause during the Civil War, and his purchase of one of his brother’s enslaved people in 1864—and Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s overseer at Monticello, Joel Wheeler, who also was an enslaver. 

“I wouldn’t characterize Uriah Levy as ‘pro-slavery,’” Olivia said, “but he was someone who was participating in and profiting from the institution of slavery. He could, so he did.” 

As I noted in Saving Monticello, Olivia pointed out that Uriah Levy purchased his first enslaved person, Aggy Dickerson West, a cook, in 1835 a year after he bought the property from James Turner Barclay, who had purchased Monticello in 1831 from Thomas Jefferson’s heirs, his daughter Martha Randolph and her son Thomas Jefferson Randolph. 

As I did in the book, Olivia talked about what Uriah Levy’s much-younger wife, Virginia Lopez Levy, had to say in the 1920s about the enslaved people at Monticello in words that can only be described as patronizing and racist. 

Here’s how I put it in the book: Virginia Lopez Levy “loved spending time at Monticello. ‘How I did enjoy galloping over those hills around Monticello,’ she said in an interview just before she died in 1925 in her 90th year.” She went on to refer to the enslaved people there as “darkies,” including in this anecdote:

“The darkies were very amusing. I remember one day accidentally coming across our cook, Aggy, in the drawing room. She was standing in front of a figure of a woman in bronze, evidently comparing her arm with this figure. Finally, she ejaculated: ‘My arm’s a heap sight prettier dan dat are black woman!’” 

Olivia pointed out that no one has uncovered any records indicating how Uriah Levy and Joel Wheeler treated their enslaved people on the mountaintop.   But if you look at how enslaved people were treated by others in Virginia, she said, “it’s likely they were being treated in the same way” at Monticello. 

Her conclusion on the overall picture of Jews and slavery in Monticello and Charlottesville: “Jewish people owned enslaved people and treated them the same way their non-Jewish counterparts did. It wasn’t because of their Judaism that they owned slaves but despite their Judaism.” 

ASKENAZI ON BOARD: In the January newsletter I mentioned—as I did in the book and in countless talks I’ve given on Saving Monticello since it came out in 2001—that Uriah Levy’s great-great grandfather, Dr. Samuel Nunez, and his immediate family came to the U.S. on a ship from London, the William and Sarah, carrying 42 Sephardic Jews. It turns out that I assumed all the emigrants were Sephardic Jews, and you know can happen when you assume. 

Sharp-eyed newsletter subscriber Kerry Rosen, who gives tours at Mickve Israel in Savannah, emailed to remind me that there were 34 Sephardic passengers on the ship along with eight Jews “from Ashkenazi backgrounds. We even know their names: Benjamin Sheftall and family, Abraham Minis and family, and a single man, Jacob Yowel.” 

Kerry is correct, as I confirmed by reading the famed Jewish-American genealogist Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s article, “New Light on the Jewish Settlement of Savannah,” which appeared in the March 1963 issue of the American Jewish Historical Quarterly and the online guide to the Minis Family papers held at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta. This is Rabbi Stern's list of the eight Ashkenazim:

As the Minis Family papers collection notes: “The first generation of the Minis family to come to Georgia shores was Abraham (c.1694-1757) and his wife Abigail (1701-1794) of German origin. 

“Records indicate that the Minis family as well as the Sheftalls and one Jacob Yowell were Ashkenazim…. They landed in Savannah July 11, 1733, together with a number of Sephardic Jewish families coming to the colony from Spain and Portugal after a residence in England.”

AMELIA PRESIDING: Levy descendant Richard Lewis recently sent me several images from his grandmother Fran Lewis’ scrapbook, including a rare photograph of Amelia Mayhoff, Jefferson Levy’s sister who frequently acted as her bachelor brother’s hostess at Monticello during his 1879-1923 ownership. The photo (below) is from a September 29, 1907, New York Herald society page article Richard kindly sent that reported that Amelia spent more than half the year “presiding over” Monticello, the family’s “historical residence.”

That society column item illuminates the social scene that Amelia and her brother created at Monticello, which I cover in depth in Saving Monticello. In October 1907, as the article notes, the siblings hosted several events on the mountaintop for the Bishop of London. Among the guests was Frances Evelyn (“Daisy”) Greville (née Maynard), the Countess of Warwick , a well-known Edwardian beauty, socialite, and writer.

The local Charlottesville Daily Progress, which often covered social doings on the mountaintop, pointed out that Jefferson Levy was the countess’ “legal adviser.”

Later that month, 75 visitors from Brooklyn paid a visit to Monticello on their way back from the Jamestown Exposition, a seven-month world’s fair-like event held near Norfolk to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607. 

EVENTS: I am almost finishing writing my next book, a slice-of-life biography of U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War, which will be published either in late November or early December. So, no events this month. I have talks scheduled for March and later in the year. For details them, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events 

MARCLEEPSON.COM: Speaking of my which, I invite you to check out my recently redesigned and updated website, which was born in 2001 in time for the publication of Saving Monticello. I hope you’ll agree that the new site is streamlined and reader friendly. It also includes a page for ordering autographed copies of my books. The image below is the centerpiece of the new landing page. 

My daughter, Cara Rose Alford, created the site through her design company, Allegory Art Consulting in Charleston, South Carolina. I recommend her work! You can learn more at  allegoryartconsulting.com 

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, go to the new page on my website https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stack of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

January 2024

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 1                                                         January 2024

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

DR. NUNEZ: Tom Loftis, a tenth-generation descendant of Uriah Levy’s great-great-grandfather Dr. Samuel Nunez (1668-1741), recently emailed to share his experiences during a recent trip to Portugal. That included what Tom learned about his ancestors, about the Portuguese Inquisition, and about the Nunez family’s 1726 escape from Lisbon to London and then on to the colony of Georgia in 1733. Tom kindly agreed to share the information he gleaned during the trip, including images from a PowerPoint he gave at his church, Saint Luke’s Presbyterian in Dunwoody, Georgia. 

I included a brief sketch of the life of Dr. Samuel Nunez as he came to be known in the United States (and is referred to in eighteenth century documents as Diogo Nunes Riberio, Samuel Riberio Nunez, Samuel Nunis, and Samuel Nunez Riberio) in Saving Monticello, along with the colorful, handed-down story about how he and his Sephardic Jewish family escaped the Portuguese Inquisition. 

In recent years I’ve learned more details about what Dr. Nunez and his family went through during the hellish Inquisition and the details of their escape, including what I reported on in the September 2022 newsletter based on recent genealogical research by Alex Bueno-Edwards. 

Alex had just created a detailed, well-documented  Dr. Samuel Nunes page on Geneanet, a European genealogical database. In preparing the page, Alex relied heavily on research done by Arlindo Correia during a deep dive into the official Portuguese Inquisition records. In 2012, Arlindo Correia uncovered a vast amount of material about the Nunes family’s Inquisition horrors, including new information about their daring, life-saving 1726 escape from Lisbon. 

Tom Loftis uncovered more details about the Nunez family saga with the help of a graduate student at Lisbon University and Rita Mayer Jardim, a Lisbon attorney who specializes in helping descendants of Sephardic Iberian Jews attain Portuguese citizenship—as well as Portuguese Jews in America: Escape from the Inquisition, a Portuguese book (see cover above) by historian Carla Vieira, who specializes in Portuguese Sephardic history. 

For “many generations, the Nunez family kept up its Jewish faith and practices in secret,” Tom wrote, “and some family members met a violent death at the hands of the inquisition.” That included Clara Nunez, who was burned to death in Seville, Spain, in 1632, and Isabel and Helen Nunez, who also were executed that year. 

Dr. Nunez was born, as I noted in Saving Monticello, in Idanha-a-Nova, near Portugal’s eastern border with Spain. What I didn’t know was that he received his medical training in Plasencia and Salamanca in Spain and at the Portuguese University of Coimbra, and began practicing in Lisbon around 1698. 

The family practiced Judaism in secret as Dr. Nunez became a prominent physician in the Portuguese capital providing medical care to King Peter II (also known as Dom Pedro II), who reigned from 1648-1706, and even the Portuguese Grand Inquisitor, along with other prominent Dominican religious figures and Lisbon secular leaders.

Tom confirmed what I wrote in SM that the Inquisition sent a spy into the Nunez household, and that he discovered the family were practicing Jews. On Saturday nights, Tom said, the family “retreated to a synagogue in an underground part of [their large home], concealed by a movable bookcase in the library.” 

Tom reported that the graduate student found digitized official records of Dr. Nunez’s Inquisition Case, number 2367, “which indicates that on August 23, 1703, prisoner Diogo Nunez Ribeiro was taken by Andre Lopes at the Palace of the Estaus, in the Rossio Square in Lisbon, at the entrance of the secret cells of the Inquisition” and was “charged with ascribing to Judaism and encouraging associates to reject Christianity.” 

Although several prominent people testified in his defense, Dr. Nunez broke under torture and confessed. On September 13, 1704, he was sentenced to “perpetual imprisonment,” which amounted to house arrest. Plus, the state confiscated some of his assets and he was forced to attend daily sessions at the Dominican Catholic Church designed to convert him to Christianity. 

Two years later, Dr. Nunez “managed to regain some of his medical influence and social contact,” Tom wrote.  Between 1700 and 1735 some 1,500 Portuguese Jews fled to Britain and the Netherlands. “After careful planning and after liquidating his assets and sending the funds to trusted Jewish friends in London,” Tom wrote, Dr. Nunez engineered his family’s escape. 

He and his family “went to Christian Church on a Sunday morning and then proceeded to the river shoreline like any other Sunday,” Tom wrote. But instead of a leisurely afternoon stroll, the family rendezvoused with a British sea captain who spirited them off to London, leaving behind their “mansion, furniture, China, prestige, and security.”  

And, as I wrote in the book, when the Nunez family arrived in London they joined a colony of some 6,000 fellow Sephardic escapees from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. Soon after arriving, Dr. Nunez remarried his wife, Gracia (known as Rebecca) in a London synagogue that many other Sephardic refugees joined. The family formally converted to Judaism in London and Dr. Nunez and his two sons, as part of the conversion, underwent the rite of ritual circumcision. 

A group of wealthy London Jews paid for the passage of a chartered ship that sailed from London in the summer of 1733 with 42 Sephardic Jews aboard, including the Nunez family. After a rough voyage, the ship, the William and Sarah, landed in Savannah, Georgia, on July 11, 1733, six months after James Oglethorpe established the colony named after his patron, King George II. At the time, there were fewer than a thousand Jews living in the 13 British colonies. 

DR. KAMENSKY: Dr. Jane Kamensky will become the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s next president on January 15. I hope to have an interview with the former Harvard University historian, focusing on the Levy family’s stewardship of Monticello, in next month’s newsletter. 

CORRECTED CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, my correction about Frances Wolff Levy Lewis being the eldest (not the second-eldest) of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon Levy, I wrote that Nancy Hoffman (who emailed about the error) was Fran’s daughter. Nancy, in fact, is Fran’s niece. I also mistakenly said that Nancy, who was born in 1930, was the last of L. Napoleon. Levy’s living children; she is the last of his living grandchildren.

Here’s a snapshot from the Malcom Stern’s pioneering book, The American Jewish Families: 1654-1988, with the info on Nancy’s three aunts and her mother Alma:

 

EVENTS: I am still at work on my next book, a slice-of-life biography of U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War, which will published next spring. So, no events this month. For details on future book talks and other author events, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

 MARCLEEPSON.COM: Speaking of the website, with the help of a terrific web designer, I have just redesigned and updated mine, which was born in 2001 in time for the publication of Saving Monticello. I hope you’ll agree that the site is streamlined and reader friendly. It also includes a page for ordering autographed copies of my books. The image below is the centerpiece of the new landing page. 

My daughter Cara Rose Alford created the site through her design company, Allegory Art Consulting in Charleston, South Carolina. Check out her website, allegoryartconsulting.com

 GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, go to the new page on my website https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stock of new copies of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

December 2023

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XX, Number 12                                                        December 2023

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

 

THE DOC: When’s the documentary going to be available? I’ve heard that question countless times since Steven Pressman’s terrific film, “The Levys of Monticello,” began screening at more than a hundred film festivals around the country last year. My answer: As soon as I know, I’ll tell the world. 

So, I’m extremely happy to report that two weeks ago I had an email from Steve letting me know that his award-winning film began streaming on November 24 on several of the big online platforms, including Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Apple iTunes. 

With scores of historic images, “The Levys of Monticello,” which was inspired by Saving Monticello, creatively and effectively tells the story of Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s 89-year stewardship of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello with input from a raft of great on-screen contributors. 

That includes including Susan Stein, Monticello’s longtime curator; Dr. Dan Jordan, the historian and former Thomas Jefferson Foundation president; University of Virginia Professor Emerita Dr. Phyllis Leffler; the renowned Brandeis University Professor of Jewish-American history, Dr. Jonathan Sarna; Niya Bates, the former director of African American history and the Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello; Virginia Commonwealth University Emeritus History Professor Dr. Mel Urofsky, Levy Family descendants Harley Lewis and her son Richard Lewis; and yours truly. So, now’s the time to watch the film from the comfort of your favorite movie watching venue—and to tell everyone you know about it! 

DR. KAMENSKY: The Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced in October that Jane Kamensky will become the organization’s next president, starting January 15. Dr. Kamensky is coming south from Massachusetts, where she has been an American History Professor at Harvard University since 2015 and also has headed the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

We realize Dr. Kamensky is extremely busy as she makes the move to Virginia and assumes the leadership of the Foundation, but we hope to sit down with her for an interview soon and report on it in next month’s (or February’s) newsletter. I’m very much looking forward to hearing her take on the history of Monticello after Thomas Jefferson died, especially Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s 89-year stewardship.   

FOUNDATION HISTORY: A hundred years ago, on December 1, 1923, the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (now the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) sealed the deal for its purchase of Monticello from Jefferson Monroe Levy. The former New York City congressman and big-time real estate and stock speculator had owned Monticello for 44 years, and—like his uncle, Uriah Levy—had restored, repaired, and preserved the house and grounds after it had fallen into serious disrepair during the 17-year legal wrangling (from 1862-79) as family members challenged Uriah’s will in which he left Monticello to the people of the United States to be used as an agricultural school for the orphans of Navy Warrant Officers.

When he signed the title of the property over to the Foundation on December 1, 1923, in New York City, Jefferson Levy received a down payment of $100,000 of the $500,000 purchase price. 

Theodore Fred Kuper, the Foundation’s first director, who was at the closing table, later described the scene: “The cash and the bonds and mortgage were delivered to Levy, and Levy signed the deed conveying full title to the property and all belongings to the Foundation,” Kuper said. 

“This was a very emotional scene and he burst out crying. He said that he never dreamt that he would ever part with the property.

Three months later, on March 6, 1924, at his home on East 37^th Street in New York City, Jefferson Levy died of heart disease, five weeks short of his 72^nd birthday. He is buried in Beth Olom Cemetery in Queens, in the Levy family plot near his illustrious uncle. 

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 The Foundation has marked its centennial this year with a series of ceremonial events. The latest, in late November, was a fact-filled livestream presentation by Ann Lucas, Monticello’s Senior Historian Emerita, titled “The Centennial of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation: 100 Years of Education and Preservation.” 

In in, Ann Lucas mentioned the stewardship of the Levy family as she detailed the Foundation’s monumental work preserving and restoring Monticello over the decades and educating the public about Thomas Jefferson and his Essay in Architecture. You can watch the livestream online at https://bit.ly/TJFLiveStream

HUNTLAND: My new book, Huntland: The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, has just been published. My tenth book, it’s my second house history, following the footsteps of Saving Monticello. 

Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, has had several memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant 21st century historic preservation ending. 

The University of Virginia Press is marketing and distributing the book. It’s available online at U-Va. Press’s website, on Amazon, and through local bookstores.

CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, I wrote that Francis (Fran) Wolff Levy Lewis was “the second-eldest” of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon Levy and his wife Lillian. Newsletter subscriber—and Fran’s niece—Nancy Hoffman emailed to let me know that her aunt actually was the oldest daughter. Nancy, who was born in 1930, is the last of L. Napoleon Levy’s living grandchildren. 

EVENTS: I am still working on my next book, a slice-of-life biography of Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War scheduled to be published in the spring of 2025. So, no events this month. For details on future talks, check the Events page on my website: https://bit.ly/NewAppearances 

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  

I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stock of new copies of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

The SM Newsletter on Line: You can read back issues of this newsletter at http://bit.ly/SMOnline