October 2025

 

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 10                                                      October 2025

 

ALONG AMERICAN LINES: In my continuing effort to unearth new (to me) material about the Levys and Monticello, I recently learned of a very accomplished friend of Jefferson Monroe Levy’s whom I had never come across before: Rabbi Rudolph Coffee, a prominent early 20^th century religious leader from Oakland, California.

I discovered Rabbi Coffee (below) after reading a letter to the editor he wrote to the Oakland Tribune in August 1921—the year Jefferson Levy officially put Monticello on the market. His decision to do so followed failed efforts that had begun in 1912 in Congress to enact legislation that would have condemned Monticello and turned it into a government-run house museum.

In his letter, Coffee, 43, who had become the rabbi of Oakland’s Temple Sinai earlier that year, spoke out in favor of recent proposals for the government to purchase Monticello from Jefferson Levy. Describing himself as “knowing the present owner very well,” the Rabbi enumerated his reasons why the government should acquire the house and grounds.

For one thing, he wrote, Levy was offering the property to the government at a price well below its value, which he said was “nearly” $3 million. He also suggested that government ownership of Monticello would be the appropriate way to honor Thomas Jefferson, whom he characterized as “a great statesman” and a man with “genuinely liberal religious ideas.” 

Coffee’s main argument, though, centered on Thomas Jefferson, self-taught architect. As the Rabbi put it: Jefferson was “one of the leading, and also the first of American architects to work along purely American lines.” He credited Jefferson with creating what he called “the colonial mansion,” and wrote that there was “no better example of it” than Monticello, which he described as a “remarkable spot, with so remarkable a building,” and a “sacred treasure” that the government should acquire so the house and grounds could “belong to the all the people… under government protection.”

The government never did buy Monticello. And two years later, Jefferson Levy sold the property, along with Monticello’s furniture and furnishings, for $500,000 to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. That private, nonprofit group had been founded that year for the purpose of purchasing Monticello. The Foundation has owned Monticello since December 1923, and as anyone who has visited knows, has cared for the house and grounds exceptionally well.

***************

As for Rudolph Coffee, he led a remarkable life. Born in Oakland in 1878, he graduated from Oakland High School, along with his friend, the famed novelist Jack London. He left California to attend Columbia University, earning a BA in 1900. He then studied at the Jewish School of Theology in New York, became a rabbi, and later, in 1908, received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh.

In 1907, he had become the rabbi of Tree of Life Congregation, a Conservative synagogue founded in 1864 in Pittsburgh—and unhappily remembered today as the scene of a horrendous 2018 attack in which a man shot and killed 11 congregants and wounded six others.

Rabbi Coffee left Pittsburgh in 1915 to become the head of Social Service Department of B’Nai B’rith, the Jewish social services organization, in Washington, D.C., in 1915. He moved to Chicago later that year, along with his wife Doris and their children.

But tragedy soon struck. Doris Coffee died at 27, on January 25, 1916. Following her funeral in San Francisco, Rudolph Coffee returned to Chicago and served as the rabbi of Temple Judea for three years, then moved to Toledo to lead Collingwood Avenue Temple, before returning to the Bay area in 1921.

That’s when he took over as the rabbi at Temple Sinai in Oakland and wound up serving in that position until 1933. The temple (above), founded in 1875 as the First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland, an orthodox synagogue, had become a Reform Judaism congregation in 1910. Among its noted congregants: East Oakland resident Gertrude Stein who attended as a child. 

Coffee, Temple Sinai’s official history notes, was “a powerful speaker,” using his sermons to comment on the issues of the day. He committed himself and the Temple to causes on both the national and local levels. His passions included opposition to the death penalty and prohibition. He also responded to the growing antisemitism in the nation.”

After leaving Temple Sinai in 1933, Dr. Coffee did not return to the rabbinate. Instead, he took leadership positions in several Bay Area nonprofits. That included serving as secretary of the San Francisco Conference of Christians and Jews from 1934–39, and as a member of the State Board of Charities and Corrections from 1924–31.

In 1934, he became the first Jewish chaplain of the newly opened federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island. In 1942, he was named chaplain at San Quentin and Folsom prisons and held those jobs till his death in 1955.

Officials at the opening of Alcatraz, 1934

                                                            ******************

WHAT A SUIT: I often describe Jefferson M. Levy, who made a fortune as a real estate and stock speculator, as a late 19^th and early 20^th century “jet-setter.” That’s because he traveled in high style extensively in the U.S. and in Europe, entertained lavishly at his townhouse in Manhattan and at Monticello, and otherwise lived an upper-crust lifestyle.

I included a few examples of Levy’s extravagances in the book. Such as him being the proud owner of a $30,000 sable overcoat, which I read about in an article in the New York World in 1913. Levy, the newspaper’s Washington correspondent wrote, bragged that the coat was the “finest piece of sable in existence, but would not say whether he had bought the coat or someone gave it to him.”

The reporter speculated that the fancy garment might have been a gift from J.P. Morgan, the Sultan of Turkey, or the Duke of Sutherland, and went to describe the sultan and duke as “gentlemen in whose acquaintance Mr. Levy revels.”

Not in the book: an item in the society column in the Orange (Virginia) Observer from March 1891 that I just discovered with another example of Jefferson Levy’s fondness for the better things in life. According to the item, Jefferson Levy was the proud possessor of a suit that was “an exact counterpart of that worn by” Thomas Jefferson when he was the U.S. minister (ambassador) at the French Court of King Louis XVI from 1784 to 1789 when the French Revolution broke out.

The suit, the newspaper reported, “consists of a coat and knee breeches of white brocaded silk with silver sword and decorations, all set in diamonds.”

I searched online for an image of Jefferson at Versailles and couldn’t find one, so I resorted to asking ChatGPT to come up with one.

Though I’m no fan of AI, I think for historical purposes the generated image (left) is a fair representation of how Jefferson would have appeared in a white silk suit, sword at his side—though I’m fairly certain he wouldn’t have been carrying a sword around in Paris.  

When I asked C-GPT to come up with an image of Jefferson Levy in the same suit, it came up a similar image, but with a face that looked more like Thomas Jefferson than Jefferson Levy. So, no deep fake there.  

EVENTS & COMMERCE:  I have a good number of events scheduled the rest of the year, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise biography of the famed Marquis, and my latest book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war.

I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for the new paperback edition of Lafayette: Idealist General and, of course, Saving Monticello. Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Most are open to the public. For details, go to: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com   

To order signed copies from my website, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering

 

 

 

 

September 2025

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter 

The latest about the book, author events, and more 

Editor - Marc Leepson 

Volume XXII, Number 9                    September 2025

EXCELLENT MANAGEMENT: Pop quiz: Can you name the non-enslaved person who lived at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello for the longest period of time in the house’s long history? If you said Thomas Lionel Rhodes, you are correct. 

Jefferson Monroe Levy hired Tom Rhodes as his on-site superintendent at Monticello in October 1887 and he wound up living and working on the mountaintop for the next 57 years until he retired in 1944. He died in 1953 in his 90th year. Tom Rhodes (below, in a 1930s newpaper photo) was the seventh superintendent Jefferson Levy hired after he bought out his uncle Uriah Levy’s other heirs and purchased Monticello in 1879 when the property was in terrible condition after 17 years of neglect UPL’s heirs wrangled over the fate of the property. 

Choosing Rhodes turned out to be a very fortuitous event in Monticello’s history. By all accounts, the 26-year-old Albemarle County (Va.) native was a tireless worker and a passionate advocate for the preservation and protection of Jefferson’s architectural masterpiece and its grounds. With Jefferson Levy paying the bills, Tom Rhodes spent more than 35 years overseeing the work on the ground repairing, restoring, and preserving Thomas Jefferson’s “Essay in Architecture.”  He continued that work after Levy sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923. 

“Monticello profited for over half a century from the inspired, devoted, indefatigable labor and financial sacrifice of Tom Rhodes,” Theodore Fred Kuper, a founder and former national director of the Foundation, said in 1955. “Every bit of work on the buildings, in the rooms or on the grounds was done under [his] personal direction.” 

In the years after 1923 “when the Jefferson Foundation found it difficult to raise the needed funds, Tom Rhodes understood and voluntarily postponed the time for the modest payments due him for his work.”

Thomas Rhodes was born June 11, 1863, at Rhodes Mill, in Ivy, Virginia, six miles outside of Charlottesville, the son of Madison and Harriet Marr Rhodes. Madison Rhodes was a barrel manufacturer who served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. 

His son had a rudimentary education and began working full time at the age of twelve. He specialized in farm management and had run Morsebrook Farm in Albermarle County for 14 years before going to work at Monticello. Levy hired him in 1887 to oversee the house, grounds, and farming operations at Monticello, where Tom Rhodes found his life’s work. That also included maintaining a large vegetable garden, berry patches, and grapevines. 

 As I noted in Saving Monticello, soon after he came to live and work at Monticello, Tom Rhodes married Junietta Cressey. They had a son, Frederick Hall Rhodes, who was born July 19, 1891, and brought up at Monticello. In April 1898, the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported favorably on the work Tom Rhodes had done on the grounds. 

“The banks on either side of the drive from the porter’s lodge to the mansion have been sewn with grass seed, and at intervals rare and beautiful flowers have been planted, which are now blooming,” the article said. “The lawns are in perfect sod and on them are late acquisitions of flowering shrubs.” 

The newspaper reported that Rhodes had planted large crops of wheat, oats, and corn on the mountaintop, and that he was overseeing construction of a driveway on Monticello’s [Rivanna] river side. “There are to be many more costly improvements which will further beautify this magnificent estate,” the paper said. “Everything about the place gives evidence of excellent management.” 

Thomas Rhodes, left, in a newspaper photo receiving a gold watch from Stuart Gibboney, the president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, on January 1, 1938, marking his 50th year (in 1937) as Monticello's superintendent

One stain on Rhodes’ management of Monticello was his steadfast allegiance to the tenets of the Confederate cause, which lasted into the 1920s. The son of a man who fought for the South during the Civil War, Tom Rhodes flew a Confederate flag in front of the house and had separate restrooms on the mountaintop for Blacks and whites. 

Fred Kuper put a stop the display of the Confederate Battle Flag as well as Rhodes’ discriminatory policies, soon after the Foundation bought the property from Jefferson Levy in late 1923. “I am very proud to add that, on my instructions to Rhodes,” Kuper later said, “all visitors to Monticello were to be received and treated regardless of color, nationality, religion, etc., and that there was to be no segregation even in toilet facilities, which were to be solely for ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies.’” 

Thomas Rhodes died at 89 on January 27, 1953, at a nursing home in Charlottesville where he had been living since his retirement nine years earlier. He is buried in Riverview Cemetery in Charlottesville alongside his wife Junietta. 

EVENTS & COMMERCE: I have a good number of events scheduled this fall, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General, my newly re-released concise biography of the famed Marquis, and my latest book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war. 

 I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for the paperback edition of Lafayette: Idealist General and, of course, Saving Monticello. Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Most are open to the public. 

For details, go to: marcleepson.com/events If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com To order signed copies from my website, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering 

August 2025

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 8                                                        August 2025

 

PRIDE IN OWNERSHIP: On May 9, 1923, as Jefferson Levy was negotiating the sale of Monticello to the fledgling Thomas Jefferson Foundation, he granted a rare newspaper interview in his West 37^th Street New York City brownstone to Raymond G. Carroll of the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

It marked one of the very few times in his life that the then 71-year-old Levy had opened up about his personal life to a journalist. The article, which appeared two days later and was subsequently carried in other newspapers across the country, provides a rare glimpse into Jefferson Levy’s lavish New York City lifestyle, along with his thoughts about his family, his religion, and his reasons for selling Monticello.

Carroll’s observations are revealing. Levy’s account of his family history and details of his ownership of Monticello also are revealing, even as they also are a mixture of fact and fantasy.

Carroll found Levy, whom he described as being six feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, living with his younger brother, 67-year-old Mitchell Levy, also a life-long bachelor. When Carroll arrived, he wrote, Jefferson Levy, was pacing “up and down in the drawing rooms” of his lavish townhouse. 

The place was packed with works of art, Carroll wrote, including “priceless vases from Sevres, crystal candelabra mounted upon costly bronze bases from Venice, a green malachite table worth $10,000 owned by a Czar of Russia, a bronze head done by the immortal David [d’Angers], a silver carving from the hands of the famous Benvenuto Cellini and other wonderful treasures and paintings.” 

When Jefferson Levy began by talking about his family, he mistakenly claimed, as he had in other interviews, that he and his brother were the last Levy descendants of Asa Levy, a Dutch Jew who had settled in New York City (then New Amsterdam) in 1654; that the Philadelphia Revolutionary War Jewish patriot Benjamin Levy—one of the signers of Continental currency—was his great-grandfather; and that his grandfather Michael Levy served in the Continental Army.

Continental Currency note signed by Benjamin Levy (‘B. Levy’), February 1777

Yes, we are the last of our line, my brother and I,” Jefferson Levy said, ignoring the fact that his sister Amelia was alive, as were his late brother Louis’s four children and Amelia’s son Monroe. 

Plus, there is no evidence that Asa Levy (sometimes referred to as Asser Levy and Asser Levy van Swellem), had any children. And genealogical sources agree that Benjamin Levy’s children did not include Michael Levy, LML’s grandfather—who did not serve in the Continental Army.

When Caroll asked about Monticello, Jefferson Levy claimed that he and “members” of his family had invested a whopping $2.4 million in the property. “This huge expenditure," Levy said, “includes the original cost of Monticello, the expenses of keeping it up, its restoration after the Civil War and the interest on the money sunk in the property.”

 Could that be true? The facts are that Jefferson Levy’s “original cost” for Monticello was just over $10,000 when he acquired the property in 1879. Uriah Levy had paid less than $3,000 when be bought it in 1834. It is true that both Levys spent significant funds to repair, restore, preserve, and furnish the house and grounds (and add acreage) to the property over the following 80-plus years. But my guess is that all of those expenditures didn’t add up to a figure close to $2.4 million—which would be worth more than $45 million in 2025. 

Levy then told Carroll, disingenuously, that he had “always said [he] would sell Monticello to the Commonwealth of Virginia or to the United States or to an organization similar to that in control of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home.” But, Levy said, “I was not going to be driven to do what I wanted to do all the time and had purposed doing from the very first.” 

It’s true that Jefferson Levy definitely did not like to be “driven” by others to do anything. Still, he had steadfastly and adamantly refused to listen to any suggestion that he sell Monticello to the federal government or any other entity from the time he gained control of it in 1879 until the fall of 1914. That’s when, most likely because of large stock market and real estate losses, he abruptly reversed course, and announced that he would sell the property, including the house’s furnishings, to the federal government for $500,000. 

Levy told Carroll that Cornelius Vanderbilt II once approached him with an offer on Monticello’s front lawn, saying: “Cannot I tempt you to sell [Monticello] with a million dollars? If not enough, name your price.” He said he turned down that offer and “scores” of others, including one from Andrew Carnegie. The Gilden Age industrialist approached Jefferson Levy in Washington, Levy said, and told him: “Any time you want to sell Monticello I’ll buy it and present it to the country.”

Although Vanderbilt and Carnegie conceivably could have made those high-dollar offers to Levy for Monticello, it’s extremely doubtful that “scores” of Gilded Age millionaires  were after him to sell. 

In the interview, Levy (above) offered the startling and hitherto publicly unmentioned news that at the 1912 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, he was offered the vice-presidential nomination. The offer, he said, came with one caveat—that if he accepted and became VP, he’d donate Monticello to the government after the election. 

Levy turned that offer down, he said, as well as a similar previous one made by William Jennings Bryan.

“What they failed to recognize—all of them—was the fact that perhaps there might be a pride in my own family connected with the ownership,” Levy said.  “Once there was a time when I was wealthy enough to have stood the strain of an absolute gift of Monticello to the country. Then they fought me. Now, when I am approached in a different spirit under conditions which I laid down from the start, it is financially necessary for me to allow others to share in the great gift of the historic landmark to the nation.” 

Jefferson Levy then showed Carroll his right hand, “upon which was a pigeon-blood ruby ring of antique pattern,” the reporter wrote. Levy said the ring had belonged to his uncle, Uriah Levy, and then launched into an exegesis on the Commodore’s naval career and his purchase of Monticello, an account that rang completely true. 

“Monticello was never looked upon by my uncle as an investment,” Jefferson Levy said. “He bought it out of deep admiration for the great Democrat.” 

As he reflected on the pending sale and his family’s long history in America, Levy told Carroll: “The whole trouble started when they tried to force me to sell Monticello, and I fought them and beat them. I am proud of my country, my family and my race. We Levys were the first Jews to land in the New World [actually, other Levys were] and as the republic was founded and expanded, we did our share of the fighting.” 

“That,” Levy said, “should entitle our family at least to some consideration.” 

EVENTS & COMMERCE:  I have a growing number of events scheduled later year, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General, my newly re-released concise biography of the famed Marquis, and my latest book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war.

I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for the paperback edition of Lafayette: Idealist General and, of course, Saving Monticello. Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Most are open to the public. For details, go to: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  To order signed copies from my website, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering 

July 2025

 

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 7                                                        July 2025

 

AI HISTORY: A few weeks ago, when I first began seeing AI prompts on my Facebook pages offering more information on some aspect of what I was posting about, I found them annoying and ignored them. But the other day, after I’d posted about Saving Monticello and the documentary, “The Levys of Monticello,” Meta’s AI offered a link with the teasing question, “How did the Levy family restore Monticello?” and I couldn’t resist clicking.

How could I not? I’m always looking for new (to me) information on the Levys and Monticello, most often material such as old newspaper articles that have been digitized and made accessible online since I did the research for the book in 1999-2001.

I have used Chat GBT occasionally over the years, mainly as a curiosity to see how accurate answers would be on subjects I knew a fair amount about. Most contained errors and not much more info than I could have easily found through a Google or other online search.

But I had read that AI had recently made great strides with accuracy, so I clicked. Not this time, though.

I actually laughed out loud at that howler of a first sentence and the ridiculous name, “Barclay Hazard Levy.” And the nonexistent “Barclay son” named, of all things, “James A. Levy.” And that the Levy Family “purchased Monticello in 1923,” which was only off by 89 years.

To set the record straight, there was no such human being as “Barclay Hazard Levy,” much less him being a great grandnephew of Thomas Jefferson. Plus, the Levy Family didn’t buy Monticello from Uriah Levy in 1923. That would have been miraclulous as Levy had died in 1862.

As for what did happen in 1923, Uriah Levy’s nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, who had acquired the property by buying out his uncle’s other heirs in 1879, sold it that year—not to his long-dead uncle, but to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.

The only Barclay in the equation is James Turner Barclay (below), who bought Monticello from Jefferson’s heirs in 1831 and sold it to Uriah Phillips Levy in 1834.

My advice: Don’t go to AI in search of the history of the Levy Family’s remarkable stewardship of Monticello. You can find the real names, dates, and lots more in Saving Monticello.

DR. SARNA: Soon after he received an honorary degree and gave the Keynote speech at Brandies University’s undergraduate commencement on May 18, Dr. Jonathan Sarna, the eminent American Jewish History professor and prolific author, retired as a University Professor of American Jewish History, Emeritus, at Brandeis, his alma mater.

If fact, the Keynote speech came on the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Sarna’s graduation from Brandeis in 1975 with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Judaic Studies. The following year, he received an MA in history from Yale University; and went on to earn a history Ph.D. from Yale in 1979.

Dr. Sarna—a long-time subscriber to this newsletter—did post-doctoral work for eleven years at the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, then returned to his alma mater, where he spent the next 35 years teaching Jewish American history at Brandeis.

A former president of the Association for Jewish Studies and the Chief Historian at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, Dr. Sarna (above) has written or edited more than two dozen books on American Jewish History. That includes his encyclopedic American Judaism: A History, and Jacksonian Jew: The Two Worlds of Mordecai Noah, a 1981 biography of the famed nineteenth century journalist and diplomat Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), a second cousin of Uriah Levy, whom mention in Saving Monticello.

Just like any other writer who deals with American Jewish History, I have sought Dr. Sarna’s advice more than once. He always has responded graciously and has helped me immensely. 

W. WILSON: As I wrote in Saving Monticello, before, during, and after his two-term presidency (1913-21), Woodrow Wilson was a strong supporter of Maude Littleton’s campaign to have the U.S. government condemn Monticello, take it from Jefferson Levy, and turn it into a government-run house museum.

During the hotly debated attempt in Congress in 1912 over legislation that would have put Littleton’s campaign in motion, the then Democratic Governor of New Jersey wrote to her, saying he supported her mission “with all of my heart.”

As the campaign continued in 1914, Maude Littleton (in the dark dress in the photo) let it be known, including during testimony before a Senate committee that year, that she that spoken to Wilson “many times on this question,” and reported that the President was strongly in favor of government ownership, “even through condemnation.”

The next year Wilson actively lobbied Senate and House leaders for passage of a resolution that would have condemned Monticello and turned it over to the government. It didn’t pass.

In the summer of 1916, a large delegation of DAR members, headed by the organization's president general, Daisy Allen Story, met with Wilson at the White House to lobby him to help to continue to use his influence to encourage Congress to approved a piece of legislation that would authorized the government to purchase Monticello.

“The President told the delegation he was in favor of the $500,000 called for in the bill to purchase the property,” the Charlottesville Daily Progress reported, “and would give his influence and aid having the bill passed.” It didn’t.

In 1917, Congress lost interest in the matter after the U.S. entered World War I. After the war ended in 1918, Levy put Monticello on the market and a real estate broker began marketing the property in the spring of 1919. As readers of Saving Monticello well know, Monticello did not sell until 1923. 

I sketched Wilson’s involvement in Maude Littleton’s campaign to wrest Monticello from Jefferson Levy in the book. One small but intriguing piece of that story that I only discovered recently is that Levy took it upon himself to go to the White House on October 2, 1919, to invite the president to come to Monticello, as a newspaper article put it, to “regain his health.” Levy, the article went on to say, “was not permitted” to see Wilson. 

Three days later, Woodrow Wilson (above) had a massive stroke, and was incapacitated for the rest of his term in office. He died on February 3, 1924, at 67. Jefferson Monroe Levy died a month and three days later, on March 6, 1924, five weeks short of his 72nd birthday—and a little over two months after he had sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. 

EVENTS & COMMERCE:  I have a growing number of events scheduled later this summer and into the fall, most Lafayette: Idealist General, my newly re-released concise biography of the famed Marquis, and my latest book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war.

I’m also doing talks, podcasts and other events for the paperback edition of Lafayette: Idealist General and, of course, Saving Monticello.

Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Most are open to the public. For details, go to: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com 

To order signed copies from my website, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering

 

 

June 2025

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 6                                                        June 2025

 

RELIGIOSITY: Saving Monticello, is, at its heart, as the title indicates, a story of historic preservation. But it also deals with Thomas Jefferson and his architectural prowess. And it includes a compelling story of not-widely-known Jewish-American history.

Said history begins with a group of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who fled their homeland during the Inquisition in the early eighteenth century. They made their way to England, and in the spring of 1733 crossed the Atlantic (along with some Ashkenazi Jews from Germany), landing in Savannah, Georgia, on July 11, not long after the colony of Georgia had been founded.

That group included a prominent physician Dr. Samuel Nunez, Uriah Levy’s great-great grandfather, along with his wife Gracia (who changed her name to Rebecca in England) and their six children. One of the first things the group of Sephardic Jews—who were forbidden under the punishment of death to practice their religion in Portugal—did after arriving in Savannah was establish a synagogue they called Kahal Kadosh Mickva Israel (Holy Congregation, the Hope of Israel). Known since 1790 as Congregation Mickve Israel, it is the third-oldest Jewish Congregation in the nation.

Without doubt, the Nunez family members were devout Jews. As for their descendants—including Uriah Levy and his nephew Jefferson M. Levy—we know through their words and deeds they were proud Jews. However, the historical evidence strongly suggests that Uriah and Jefferson Levy and other Nunez descendants were not particularly “religious,” as it’s clear that they did not regularly attend synagogue services nor took part in other aspects of Judaism such as holding Passover seders and celebrating bar and bat mitzvahs.

What follows is a concise rundown on some of that distinguished and accomplished family members’ religiosity.

As I wrote in Saving Monticello, Dr. Nunez (known in Portugal as Samuel Nunes Ribiero) became a close friend of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, when the English cleric lived in Savannah in the mid-1730s. And as we have seen, Dr. Nunez was one of the founders of Mickve Israel, which to this day uses the Torah that the Jewish settlers brought with them on their voyage to Georgia in 1733.

Soon after the Nunez family arrived in Savannah, 19-year-old Maria Caetana Nunez (known as Zipporah), Samuel and Rebecca’s oldest daughter, married David Mendes Machado, 38, another Sephardic Jew who had sailed from London, although he may have arrived several years before the Nunez Family and the other 1733 settlers did.

David Machado was a member of another well-to-do Portuguese crypto-Jewish family. He was a theologian and a scholar who was an expert in Hebrew and Jewish traditions, even though he had been forced to live as a Catholic in Portugal.

Less than a year after the wedding, David and Zipporah Machado moved to New York City. They came north after he was appointed hazzan at Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the first Jewish congregation established in North America. Shearith Israel was founded in 1654.

Jonas Phillips (below), Uriah Levy’s German-born Ashkenazi Jewish maternal grandfather, born Jonah Phaibush, arrived in Charleston. South Carolina, in 1756 to seek his fortune at age 21. A few years later, Jonas Phillips moved to Albany, New York, where he became a Freemason and opened a store in which he sold food and spirits.

After leaving Albany, he married Rebecca Machado (a daughter of David and Zipporah) in 1761, and settled in New York City where he operated a retail store. He also served the Jewish community as a shohet (ritual slaughterer) and bodek (meat examiner). Jonas became a naturalized citizen in April 1771. A few years later he moved his family to Philadelphia where he opened another retail store.

His most famous public religious act was the September 7, 1787, letter Jonas Phillips wrote to the Constitutional Convention, which was debating what would become the U.S. Constitution. Identifying himself as “one of the people called Jews of the City of Philadelphia,” he called on the body to provide “all men” in the Constitution the “natural and unalienable Right to worship almighty God according to their own Conscience and understanding.”

Jonas Phillips was instrumental in raising funds to purchase a new building for Mikveh Israel Synagogue in Philadelphia in 1782, and was elected the president of that Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, which had been established in 1740. As the head of the congregation, he invited George Washington to attend the dedication ceremonies of its new building.

Uriah Levy’s second cousin, Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), a well-known American diplomat and journalist, was the recipient of a famous letter from Thomas Jefferson in which the Sage of Monticello expressed his views on freedom of religion and Judaism. 

In 1818, Mordecai Noah (below)—one of the best-known American Jews in the Early Republic—had given a speech at Shearith Israel in New York, a copy of which made its way to Monticello. Jefferson wrote to Noah on May 28, saying he had read the speech “with pleasure and instruction, having learnt from it some valuable facts about Jewish history which I did not know before.” 

Jefferson went on to denounce “religious intolerance,” which he called “a vice.” He concluded that the only “antidote” to religious intolerance would be federal laws that protected “our religious as they do our civil rights by putting all on an equal footing.” 

As for Uriah Levy, a late 20th century magazine article about him bore the headline, “When Monticello had a Mezuzah.” Even though the words were not meant to be taken literally, a careful search in recent years for signs that one or more mezuzahs adorned door frames at Monticello during the long (1834-1923) Levy Family ownership came up empty.

That absence is another reason that historians believe that—though Uriah Levy was an outspoken and proud Jew; was the victim of vicious anti-Semitism during his 50-year Navy career; and an ardent admirer of Thomas Jefferson because of his dedication to religious freedom—there is little evidence that he formally practiced the religion of his ancestors.

Levy likely limited his Judaic practice to being a member of Shearith Israel in New York where his great grandfather David Machado had served as hazzan a century before. And by becoming the first president of Washington Hebrew Congregation, which formed in 1852.

One other thing: As I noted in Saving Monticello, in 1855, Uriah Levy, along with many other naval officers, had been dropped from the Navy's active-duty lists. He fought his removal and based his defense on anti-Semitism. During a lengthy trial, Levy made a long passionate speech in which he trumpeted his Judaism.

“My case,” he said, “is the case of every Israelite in the Union.” He then asked rhetorically: “Are the thousands of [Jewish people], in their dispersion throughout the earth, who look to America as a land bright with promise, are they now to learn, to their sorrow and dismay, that we too have sunk into the mire of religious intolerance and bigotry?”

Elected to the Jewish American Hall of Fame in 1988, UPL was honored by the U.S. Navy with the naming of a World War II destroyer escort the U.S.S. Levy. And the first permanent Jewish Chapel built by American armed forces, the Commodore Levy Chapel at the Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia, was dedicated in his name in 1959.

Not to mention the U.S. Naval Academy’s imposing Commodore Uriah P. Levy Jewish Center and Chapel (in photo, above), which opened its doors in 2005.

And there’s this: The tombstone Uriah Levy later erected on his mother’s grave at Monticello (below) includes the Hebrew month and year of her death. It is inscribed: “To the memory of Rachel Phillips Levy, Born in New York, 23 of May 1769, Married 1787. Died 7, of IYAR, (May) 5591, A.B. (1839) at Monticello, Va.”

One of Uriah Levy’s brothers, the peripatetic sea captain Jonas Phillips Levy, like his brother Uriah, took part in religious affairs in the mid-nineteenth century, and seems to have taken a bigger role in practicing his religion. At least he did when he and his family were living in the Nation’s Capital in 1862 and he became an active member of Washington Hebrew Congregation and is credited with making the first monetary contribution to that synagogue after its founding that year.

As for Jonas’ son, Jefferson Levy, the globe-trotting Gilded Age millionaire real estate and stock speculator and three-term member of Congress from New York City, seems not to have been particularly religious.

He likely was a member of Shearith Israel, since he is buried in Beth Olam Cemetery in Queens, near his Uncle Uirah, in a section associated with Shearith Israel. His gravestone contains no Hebrew words, though. JML’s brother and business partner, L. Napoleon Levy (1854-1921), on the other hand, was a mover and shaker at Shearith Israel.

 As I noted in this newsletter two years ago, L.N. Levy served as the congregation’s president for much of the time between 1895 and 1921, the year of his death 1921.  

EVENTS AND COMMERCE:  I have a growing number of events scheduled later this summer and into the fall, most of them for my new book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war.

I’m also lining up talks, podcasts and other events for the new paperback version of Lafayette: Idealist General.

Many of my upcoming events are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Some are open to the public. For details, go to this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  

To order signed copies of my books, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering 

This issue is dedicated in loving memory to my brother, Evan Leepson (July 18, 1947 – June 12, 2025), a man of deep religious faith.

 

May 2025

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXII, Number 5                                                        May 2025

OUR MARQUIS: In October 2011 I felt honored to do a talk at the Jefferson Library at Monticello on my recently published book, Lafayette: Idealist General. Why a talk on a French General and statesman at the Jefferson Library? That’s an easy one. The 20-year-old Marquis de Lafayette, a major general in the Continental Army, immediately bonded with the 38-year-old Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia, in April 1871 when they met near Richmond during the Revolutionary War.

Both spoke French; they found that they shared an affinity for the tenets of the Enlightenment; and they became life-long friends.

The men cemented that friendship in 1785 when the Continental Congress sent Jefferson to Paris to succeed Benjamin Franklin as the U.S. Minister (Ambassador) to France. Jefferson and Lafayette became confidants as Lafayette took an increasingly active part in French national affairs.

Lafayette, circa 1825

As a member of the Assembly of Notables, Lafayette was an outspoken proponent of establishing a constitutional monarchy with guarantees of individual freedom and a republican—versus an unfettered monarchical—government. In other words, what he fought for during the American Revolution against the British.

Lafayette wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789, a seminal document that had many similarities to James Madison’s Bill of Rights and to the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in writing.

Lafayette’s’ Declaration, which became the preamble to the French Constitution, in fact, included nearly the same “all men are created equal” language as Jefferson’s Declaration did.

Fast forward to Lafayette’s famed third and final tour of the United States when he was treated like a twenty-first century rock star. Everywhere he went—and he went just about everywhere, visiting all 24 states from July 1824 to September 1825—crowds gathered by the thousands to honor the Frenchman who served with distinction during the Revolutionary War at countless dinners, galas, parades, ceremonies, and other events.

One memorable event took place in November 1824 when Lafayette and his small entourage paid a visit to an ailing Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. I described that emotional occasion briefly in Saving Monticello and in this newsletter, and elaborated on in the Lafayette book.

The Marquis and his party spent ten days enjoying Jefferson's hospitality and being feted at the University of Virginia. This was the visit after which Jefferson wrote to a friend that he had to replenish his stock of red wine after the Frenchman left.

Lafayette stopped by again just before he left for home in August 1825, but stayed only a short time as Jefferson was ill. He died less than a year later on July 4, 1826.

Bill Barker & Charles Wissinger
as Jefferson and Lafayette
at Monticello in November 2024

UPL & THE MARQUIS: Back in 2011 during the Q&A after my talk, an audience member asked me if Uriah Levy and Lafayette had ever crossed paths. The answer was yes. And their meeting, in 1833 in Paris, had important ramifications for the future of Monticello

Uriah Levy, in the French capital between Navy postings, sought out the famed sculptor David d’Angers and commissioned a full-length marble sculpture of Thomas Jefferson. Then Levy called on the aging Marquis, telling him about the statute and asking to borrow a portrait of Jefferson by Thomas Sully that Lafayette had for the sculptor to use for the image of Jefferson’s face. 

During that meeting, it’s likely that Lafyette, who corresponded with Martha Jefferson Randolph in Virginia, asked Levy to return the favor by checking check on her, the family, and on Monticello. Levy agreed.

That is one feasible reason why after Levy came home to the U.S., he booked passage on a coach from Philadelphia to Charlottesville in the spring of 1834. When he arrived in Charlottesville, Levy found that Martha Randolph and the family were well, but that James Turner Barclay—who purchased Monticello from the Randolph’s in 1831—was anxious to sell the property. 

Soon thereafter, in April 1834, Levy signed a contract with Barclay to purchase Monticello and its 219 acres. The rest is history—the history that I tell in Saving Monticello.

Not to bury the lead, but this tale of Lafayette, Jefferson, and Levy came to mind because the University of Virginia Press has just published a second edition of Lafayette: Idealist General in paperback in conjunction with the two hundredth anniversary of the Marquis’ famed farewell tour

It’s available on the online booksellers and at your local bookstore. For a personally autographed copy, please go to this page on my website, https://bit.ly/BookOrdering. I’ll fulfill your order as soon as I receive it.

EVENTS AND COMMERCE:  I have a growing number of events scheduled this spring and summer, most of them for my new book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war.

I’m also lining up talks, podcasts and other events for the new paperback version of Lafayette: Idealist General.

Many are speaking engagements for historic preservation and other groups. Some are open to the public. For details, go to this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

If you’d like to arrange a talk on The Unlikely War Hero, Saving Monticello, Lafayette, or any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  

To order a signed copied, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering I also have new paperback copies of Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; and The Ballad of the Green Beret.