Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about
the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor
- Marc Leepson
Volume XXII, Number 12 December 2025
THE 1879 SALE: A good portion of Saving Monticello is dedicated to the fate of Thomas Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture from March 22, 1862, when its owner since 1834, Uriah Levy, died, until 1879, when his nephew Jefferson M. Levy assumed ownership. During those seventeen years, the house and grounds were neglected and the property’s ownership in limbo.
The reason: a lawsuit filed by Uriah Levy’s heirs against his estate contesting the section in his will that bequeathed Monticello to the federal government to be used as an agricultural school for the orphans of Navy warrant officers.
For reasons that are unclear, Levy wanted said orphans to learn to become “practical farmers,” according to the will. And he wanted the property to be “cultivated” so that the “boys and their instructors raise all they may require to feed themselves” and their instructors.
The idea that Monticello should be turned into a self-sustaining, government-run agricultural school/farm didn’t exactly go over well with the heirs, of which there were more than 60.
Six months after Uriah Levy’s will was admitted to probate, on October 31, 1862, partition lawsuits were filed in New York, where Levy lived, and in Virginia, challenging the will’s directions for Monticello’s fate.
The New York suit was filed by two New York City lawyers: Uriah Levy’s close friend David S. Coddington and Levy’s 34-year-old nephew, Asahel Levy, the son of his younger brother Isaac. Coddington and Asahel Levy were among the eight executors of UPL’s estate. Asahel Levy was among the many family members and friends named as beneficiaries in Levy’s will.
Uriah bequeathed Asahel Levy (refered to in the will as “Ashel”) Washington Farm, a property UPL had bought in Albermarle County, Va., not far from Monticello. Levy also gave his newphew “all my Negro slaves and all my horses, cattle, stock, and crops” on the farm, along with $5,000 in cash.
What’s more, he bequeathed Ashel “my Gold Box with the freedom of the City of New York given me by” the city. Said gold box was an ornate snuff box that the NYC leaders presented to Levy on February 6, 1834, after he gave the city a painted plaster model of a larger-than-life bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson that Levy had commissioned in Paris. “Freedom of the City” was a largely ceremonial honor akin to being awarded the key to the city.
Uriah Levy bequeathed all of his New York City property to his wife, Virginia Lopez Levy, along with all his household furniture, “either useful or ornamental,” as the will put it. Upon her death or marriage, Uriah directed that the furniture go to Asahel Levy.
I won’t go into the complicated details of the lawsuits, which took 17 years to wend their way through the courts in New York and Virginia. I cover the highlights in Saving Monticello.
Suffice it to say here that during that time Monticello went into its second period of severe physical decline, as illustrated by the cover photo of the book, the oldest known photographic image of Monticello, taken sometime in the 1870s.
The suits were settled after another of Uriah Levy’s nephews, Jefferson Levy, an extremely successful New York real estate and stock speculator and the son of Uriah Levy’s youngest brother, Jonas, bought out enough of the other heirs’ shares of the wall. That gave Jefferson Levy enough support for him to buy the property when it went up for sale at an auction held on the mountaintop on March 20, 1879.
I provided a very short description of the auction in the book because the only primary source I could find about it when I was doing the research 25 years ago was from a short article in a Staunton, Virginia, newspaper.
I wrote that it appeared that Jefferson Levy was the only bidder at the March 20 auction. And that his winning bid was $10,050—roughly $325,000 in 2025 dollars. And that the money went to the sale’s commissioner, who took a small percentage and then distributed the balance to the heirs. Since Jefferson Levy had bought out most of the heirs’ shares, he received a good percentage of the purchase price. In essence, he bought Monticello from himself.
I recently found a more detailed description of the auction that strongly indicates that Jefferson Levy was not the only bidder, although the outcome was the same. A March 24, 1879, article in The New York Herald reported that “a great number of Virginia gentlemen and residents of the neighboring counties were present” at the sale on the mountaintop four days earlier. Those folks weren’t there to bid on the house, though. They showed up “more from curiosity” to see what would become of Thomas Jefferson’s famous property.
The article said that a man from Charlottesville, S.M. Keller, opened the bidding at $5,000. But he dropped out after being outbid by Asahel Levy, who went on to make “a number of bids.” Then Jefferson Levy ended the auction with his $10,050 offer and took control of Monticello.
Jefferson Levy would go on to repair, restore, and preserve the house and grounds; furnish the house with antiques; and acquire more acreage before selling it in 1923—44 years later—to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.
EVENTS & COMMERCE:
I am in the process of scheduling events for 2026, 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.
If you’d like to arrange a talk, podcast appearance, or other event 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
