Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XX, Number 10 October 2023
“The study of the past is a constantly evolving,
never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner
‘100 YEARS’ EXHIBIT: The year 1923 was a landmark one in Monticello’s long history. That was the year that Jefferson Levy—who had owned Thomas Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture since 1879, and had repaired, preserved, and restored the house and grounds—sold the property to the fledgling Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. That nonprofit had formed in March with the express purpose of purchasing and running Monticello.
The Foundation has now owned and operated Monticello
for a hundred years and has commemorated its centennial with events throughout
the year. That includes a terrific exhibit at the Foundation’s Jefferson
Library, dedicated in 2002 a stone’s throw from Monticello. It’s called “100
Years of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation,” and is on display at the Library and
online with an informing, and evocative virtual tour.
The exhibit was curated and designed by Anna Berkes, the Library’s Manager of Public Services and Collection Development; Megan Brett, the Manager of Collections Processing and Digital Initiatives; retired Monticello guide par excellence Bill Bergan; and Library volunteer Jeni Crockett-Holme, under the direction of Endrina Tay, the Foundation’s Fiske and Marie Kimball Librarian.
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| Jefferson Library Main Reading Room |
On a personal note, all of the above folks, and many others at the Foundation, have been strong supporters of my work since the day in 1997 that I came to the Mountaintop to do research for what would become Saving Monticello.
Here’s the link for the virtual tour: https://bit.ly/JeffLibraryExhibit And here’s the link for the Jefferson Library’s website with info about visiting hours and access to its extensive collection of material: https://www.monticello.org/research-education/jefferson-library
CENTENNIAL YEAR CHRONOLOGY: As a date-obsessed, linearly-oriented historian, I felt a burning need to put together a chronology of the Foundation’s 1923 highlights. Also, FYI: the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation dropped the M-word in 2000.
February 1923 - Gregory Doyle of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, sets up a meeting at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York City to discuss forming a new private, nonprofit to purchase Monticello. Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV, a great-great grandson of his namesake, representing Virginia, journeys north to meet with several wealthy and influential New York City lawyers, including Virginia-born Stuart Gatewood Gibboney.
March 3 - A follow-up meeting is held meeting at the Lawyers’ Club in New York City at which the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation is born. Gibboney assumes the presidency of the group. Theodore Fred Kuper, a young New York City lawyer who had immigrated to this country as a young boy from Russia in 1891, is made national director with a promised salary of $50 a week.
Early April – The Foundation announces that an agreement has been reached with Jefferson Levy to purchase Monticello and that it would soon launch a nationwide movement to raise $1 million to purchase and administer the property.
April 13 – On the 180th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, a Certificate of Incorporation, or charter, of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc. is filed in the office of New York’s Secretary of State in Albany. A certified copy is filed that day in the County Clerk’s Office in New York City where the Foundation would set up its offices.
The Foundation’s Board of Directors includes U-Va. President Edwin Alderman, Stuart Gibboney, Moses Grossman, and Maud Littleton—the woman who infamously tried to wrest control of Monticello from Jefferson Levy; she would resign the next month. Also on the Board: Nancy Langhorne Astor, better known as Lady Nancy Astor, a native Virginian who was the first woman to serve in the British House of Commons, and her sister Irene Langhorne Gibson of Richmond (below), the original Gibson Girl of the 1890s, the famously beautiful model for hundreds of drawings by her equally famed artist husband Charles Dana Gibson.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the former president, also is named to the Board, as well as Governor Lee Trinkle of Virginia and Felix M. Warburg, the extremely wealthy German-born Jewish New York banker and philanthropist who had tried to purchase Monticello for the nation several years before the Foundation was created.
May 31 - The Foundation and Jefferson Levy sign an option for the purchase of
Monticello, the 640 acres around it, and all of the furniture and furnishings
inside. The price: $500,000. On that same day the Foundation is “domesticated”
in Virginia, giving it the legal right to transact business in that state.
June 8 -The Foundation Board unanimously approves the contract.
June 30 - The deed of trust is executed. Jefferson Levy gives the Monticello Association (the organization of Jefferson descendants that owns the family graveyard at Monticello) an additional half acre of land adjacent to the cemetery to be used as a graveyard for other Jefferson descendants.
July 14 - The Foundation issues a statement making a public appeal for $1-million for the purchase price and for “the proper and effective maintenance of Monticello as a national memorial throughout all time.”
December 1 – Jefferson Levy receives the first mortgage payment and signs the title of Monticello over to the Foundation in New York City. Fred Kuper 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. 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.”
December 3 - The Foundation’s Deed of Conveyance is signed in the Albemarle County Clerk’s office in Charlottesville. The news makes the front page of the next day’s New York Times. Soon thereafter, Monticello is open to the public. The Foundation hires two local African American men, Benjamin Carr and Oliver Johnston, to guide visitors through the house.
Thomas Rhodes (second from left) Monticello's long-time superintendent, whom Jefferson Levy hired soon after he took possession of the property in 1879, in the early 1920s with three house tour guides: Robert Sampson, William Page, & Benjamin Carr
March 6, 1924 - At his home on East 37th Street in New York City, Jefferson Levy dies of heart disease, five weeks short of his 72nd birthday.
1940. The Foundation pays off the mortgage.
THE HUNTLAND BOOK: The University of Virginia Press will be
distributing and marketing my next book, Huntland:
The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, which
will be coming out in just a few weeks. My tenth book, it’s my second house
history, along the lines of Saving
Monticello.
Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, and certainly has lots of history, memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant twenty-first century historic preservation story.
Here’s the link for the U-Va. Press Fall Catalog with more info about the book: https://bit.ly/U-VaPressHuntland By the end of the month, it’ll be available in bookstores, on the U-Va. Press website, and through the big online booksellers.
EVENTS: On Sunday, October 22, I’ll be doing a talk on Saving Monticello and a book signing as part of Hadassah Charlottesville’s “Jewish in Virginia – Our Past, Our Present, Our Future” event at the Hillel Brody Jewish Center at the University of Virginia.
The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and includes a continental breakfast and buffet lunch—and live Klezmer music. Registration closes on October 13. To register, go to: https://bit.ly/HillelHadassah
For details on events later this year, check the Events page on my website: https://bit.ly/NewAppearances
GIFT IDEAS: For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com
I also have
a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with new copies 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.
