August 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 8                                                                     August 1, 2016

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AT THOMAS JEFFERSON’S MONTICELLO: That’s the unoriginal, if accurate, title of a long-ish article by Julee Morrison that appeared in The Huffington Post July 6. In it, Morrison, who writes the Mommy’s Memorandum blog, offers a breezy, upbeat look at the visit she and her family paid to Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture a month ago, along with a little bit of Jefferson and Monticello history.

Morrison first mentions Uriah Levy while discussing Jefferson’s tombstone. She correctly notes that UPL, as I wrote in Saving Monticello, “moved the tombstone up to the house” because unbidden visitors had taken one too many chippings out of it as souvenirs. Morrison, in her section on Mulberry Row, does not mention the fact that Uriah Levy’s mother Rachel is buried there, despite including a picture of the Visitor Center exhibit’s images of Uriah, Rachel, and Jefferson Levy.

There are just a few lines about Monticello’s post-Jefferson history of the place. “About 10 years after the former President’s death in 1826, Uriah P. Levy purchased Jefferson’s run down estate that was almost in ruin,” Morrison correctly notes. “He began a long and costly program of renovation and restoration, including the purchase of an additional 2,500 acres adjoining the historic property.” Not exactly.

When UPL bought Monticello from James Turner Barclay in 1834, it consisted of just 218 acres (Barclay had sold off more than 300 acres in the three years he’d owned it). During the next twenty-five years, Uriah Levy did buy hundreds of acres near Monticello, but none adjacent to it. When he died in 1862, Monticello contained the same 218 acres that it had when Levy bought it from Barclay.

UPL’s nephew, Jefferson Levy, also bought (and sold) hundreds of acres around Monticello. When he sold it to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923, the Monticello property itself was made up of 640 acres. Since then, the Foundation has expanded the property considerably. Today, Monticello, contains some 2,500 acres, including the former Jefferson holdings of Tufton and Shadwell.

Morrison ends her post by saying: “After Levy’s death in 1862, his will directed that Monticello - the house and property - be left ‘to the people of the United States.’ The government declined the offer.”

There are, however, two other (fairly minor) errors: Monticello is in Charlottesville, not Charleston. And the “nickel view” Morrison writes about is the one seen from the “back of the house,” as there is no “back.”

Thomas Jefferson officially named the two entrances the “East Front” and “West Front.” The latter is the “nickel view.”

To read the entire article, go to huffingtonpost.com/julee-morrison

EVENTS:  I am working with the copy editor on next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” guy, which will come out in March of next year. I soon will be doing a lot more speaking engagements on all of my books, including Saving Monticello.

The only event I have scheduled for August is a talk I will on Sunday, August 28, at 2:00 p.m. at the Graffiti House, the visitors center at the Brandy Station Civil War Battlefield in Brandy Station, Virginia, between Warrenton and Remington, in Fauquier County. My talk on Francis Scott Key and my biography, What So Proudly We Hailed is free and open to the public. For more info, go to brandystationfoundation.com

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including my Francis Scott Key, biography, What So Proudly We Hailed, and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette, and my upcoming Barry Sadler biography (title coming soon) —at marc527psc@aol.com For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia.

We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

July 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 7                                                                     July 1, 2016

THE AUCTIONS:  My friend, Rebecca English, who lives near Charlottesville and has done pioneering research on the fate of the four “Levy lions” that once graced the grounds at Monticello, has dug up some great new material on the second of two 1928 auctions of Jefferson Levy’s Monticello furniture and furnishings.

As I wrote in Saving Monticello, when Jefferson Levy sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1923 for $500,000 he agreed to convey everything inside the house as well.

But the Foundation’s director of restoration Fiske Kimball did not want one stick of Levy’s furniture in the house. That’s why the Foundation held a public auction of Jefferson Levy's former furniture at Monticello on November 17, 1928, to, in essence, erase all traces of the 89-year ownership of Monticello by Jefferson Levy and his uncle Uriah Levy. 

“We are making room at Monticello for more of the original relics and furnishings which belonged to Thomas Jefferson,” the Foundation’s President Stewart Gibboney said the day before the sale. When Gibboney explained what furnishings were going up for auction, he did not mention the names Uriah Levy or Jefferson Levy.

“Only those furnishings which did not belong to Jefferson but which were placed there during the years when Monticello was in private hands will be sold,” he said. That meant that all the tables and chairs, sofas, carpets, chandeliers, clocks, vases, statuary, paintings, lamps, beds, bureaus, dressers, chests, and a pair of twin bed, that Jefferson Levy had purchased and conveyed with the sale would go to the highest bidders.

After the November 17 auction in Virginia, a second sale (of the larger items) took place December 4-8 at the Art Rooms at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Foundation officials pasted a label on each item that said that the piece had come from Monticello during the Levy period.

As Rebecca found out, Levy’s Monticello items were only a part of that sale, which took place over five days. The auction also included items from the collection of a mining magnate named John Markle. What’s more, many of the Jefferson and Monticello-related items appear to have been donated to the Foundation by their owners for the auction, the proceeds of which would be used to pay off the mortgage at Monticello and for the Foundation’s operating expenses. Above is an image of page two of the catalogue.

Rebecca found that more than a thousand items were sold during the sale. Of that group, she saw thirteen listed in the catalogue as having once been at Monticello during Jefferson Levy’s stewardship (from 1879-1923).

The group included a gilt bedstead; two green and gold, hand-carved bedsteads said to come from Mad King Ludwig; a bronze and rosewood inkstand; a set of 22 flags of the nations; a statue of Marcus Aurelius from Monticello’s lawn; a Pandora clock and pedestal “that once adorned the palace of Louis XV”; a blue and gold clock with two four-branch candelabra; and a set of three Royal Sevres vases and a clock from France.

The latter (in photo below from the catalog) sat atop the dining room mantel, the one on which Jefferson Levy had replaced the distinctive Wedgwood insets that had been destroyed by vandals in the 1870s. 

The Greek-style statue of a woman (below) also was listed in the catalogue. The photo is among those in the Holsinger Studio Collection of Monticello photographs taken from 1912-1917 that are now in Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library.

                       

For more on Rebecca English’s work on the auctions, go to http://forsythiahill.blogspot.com/2016/02/plaza-art-auction-new-york-city-items.htmlh

EVENTS:  I am about to begin working with the copy editor on next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” guy, which will come out in March of next year. I soon will be doing more speaking on my books, including Saving Monticello.

I have just one event scheduled this month, Monday, July 4, a live appearance at 7:50 a.m. Eastern time on the “The Warren Pierce Show,” on WJR Radio, Detroit. I’ll be talking about Francis Scott Key and the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The show streams live at wjr.com/the-warren-pierce-show

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including my Francis Scott Key, biography, What So Proudly We Hailed, and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline  That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.   

June 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 6                                                                     June 1, 2016

OLDEST CONGREGATION & SYNAGOGUE:  Here’s a quick two-part quiz:

• What is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States?
• What is the nation’s oldest synagogue?

If you answered Shearith Israel in New York City as the oldest congregation and Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode, Island, as the oldest synagogue, you go to the head of the class.

As I wrote in SavingMonticello, Shearith Israel was the first Jewish congregation established in North America. It was founded in 1654 by the first Jews who arrived in Niuw Amsterdam, as New York City was then known, from Recife, Brazil. Until 1825, it was the only Jewish congregation in the city.

Shearith Israel moved to its fifth and current home, a magnificent building at 70^th Street and Central Park West (above), in 1897. Uriah Levy’s great grandfather, David Machado—who married Maria Caetana Nunez, the daughter of the family patriarch Dr. Samuel Nunez—moved from Savannah, Georgia, to New York to serve as hazzan of Shearith Israel in the 1740s. A hundred years later Uriah Levy joined the Congregation. His nephew L. Napoleon Levy (a brother of Jefferson Levy) served as president of Shearith Isreal in the 1890s. I had the pleasure of doing a talk there on the Levy Family and Monticello in March of 2002.

The congregation that would make its home in Touro Synagogue—which does not have a Nunez/Phillips/Levy family connection—was founded in 1658 as Nephuse Israel, also by Sephardic descendants of Jewish families who first went to the Caribbean to escape certain death during the Spanish Inquisition. The current Touro Synagogue was dedicated in 1763, making it the oldest in the nation. 

Touro—which was named for two of its congregants—recently won a legal battle with Shearith Israel in the District Court of Providence. It had to do with Touro’s proposed sale of an extremely valuable pair of 18^th century silver ornaments called rimonim that sit on top of Torahs. Touro wanted to sell the finials to raise millions to keep the synagogue operating.

Shearith Israel argued that it owned not just the rimonim, but also the Touro synagogue itself. That’s because many of Touro’s congregants had moved to New York and joined Shearith Israel in the late 1700s and early 1800s. They closed the building, and took the keys to Touro and many other objects, including Torahs and rimonim, with them to Shearith Israel.

The objects were returned about a hundred years later when Rhode Island experienced a large wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern and Central Europe and the long-dormant Touro reopened.

“The central issue here is the legacy of some of the earliest Jewish settlers in North America, who desired to make Newport a permanent haven for public Jewish worship,” Judge John J. McConnell wrote in his decision, in which he ruled that Shearith Israel had been the trustee—not the owner—of Touro.

For more info on the dispute, here's an article in The New York Times.

EVENTS:  

·        Saturday, June 11  – 11:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. book signing of Saving Monticello at the Gift Shop at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.

• Tuesday, June 14 – 10:20 a.m. talk on Flag: An American Biography, Brethren Village Retirement Community “Lunch & Learn” event, 3001 Lititz Pike, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• Saturday, June 18 – 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. book signing of Saving Monticello, Flag, Desperate Engagement, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed at “Eat Local, Read Local” event, Cascades Library, Potomac Falls, Virginia
• Sunday, June 19 – 10:45 a.m. talk on Flag and book signing at LZ Maryland Writers’ Hootch, Maryland State Fairgrounds, Timonium, Maryland
• Saturday, June 25 – Luncheon talk on Lafayette and book signing for Virginia Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims, Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including What So Proudly We Hailed and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline  That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

May 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 5                                                                     May 1, 2016

‘BY DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT’:  That’s the name of an exhibit, subtitled “Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War,” on view at the Princeton University Art Museum through June 14.

The exhibit, which opened in February, contains more than 170 objects—novels, poems, books, maps, religious works, paintings, photographs, newspapers, and scientific treatises—produced by, or relating to, Jews in the Early Republic.

The items are on loan from museums, synagogues, and private collections, including many objects from the collection of Princeton alum Leonard L. Milberg. That includes this 1831 portrait of strikingly beautiful Rebecca Gratz (above) by the famed, Philadelphia-based portrait painter Thomas Sully (1783-1872).

Several of the items in the exhibit are connected to Phillips/Levy family. That includes the famous June 27, 1787, letter written by the noted Philadelphia physician (and signer of the Declaration of Independence) Dr. Benjamin Rush to his wife, in which he described the June 1787 wedding of Uriah Levy’s mother and father, Rachel Phillips and Michael Levy in Philadelphia. Rush’s description of their wedding is thought to be the first written record of a Jewish wedding ceremony in the New World.

Family tradition holds, by the way (as I wrote in Saving Monticello), that George Washington, then president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, attended the wedding. Other family stories claim that Washington had danced at the wedding of Uriah Levy’s grandparents, Jonas Phillips and Rebecca Machado back in 1762.

Also in the Princeton exhibit is another important letter in the annals of Jewish-American history. It was written on May 28, 1818, by Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Levy’s second cousin Mordecai Manuel Noah—a diplomat and journalist, and the first American-born Jewish person to become nationally prominent. Earlier that year Noah had given a speech at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York, a copy of which made its way to Monticello.

Jefferson wrote to Noah on May 28, 1818, expressing his views on freedom of religion and his condemnation of anti-Semitism. Jefferson wrote that he had read Noah’s speech “with pleasure and instruction, having learnt from it some valuable facts in Jewish history which I did not know before.”

Judiasm, Jefferson said, “by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practiced by all when in power.Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religious, as they do our civil rights, by putting all on an equal footing. But more remains to be done, for although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice.... I salute you with great respect and esteem.”

The letter is in the collection of the Yeshiva University Museum.

           

The exhibit’s lavishly illustrated catalog, with thirteen scholarly essays, is being sold at the Art Museum Store. For more info, go to artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/1655

EVENTS:  I just sent in my manuscript for my next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” guy, which will come out in March of next year. I soon will be doing more speaking on my books, including Saving Monticello.

Just one event this month, on Sunday, May 15, at the Manassas Museum in Manassas, Virginia, a talk on Lafayette at 1:30 p.m. It’s free and open to the public. For info, go to manassascity.org/1657/Free-Book-Talks

  

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including my Francis Scott Key, biography, What So Proudly We Hailed, and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline  That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

April 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 4                                                                     April 1, 2016

HEMINGS FAMILY TOUR:  Although Saving Monticello begins on the day that Thomas Jefferson died (July 4, 1826), people regularly ask me what I think about the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the famed enslaved woman. I always tell them that Saving Monticello is a history of what happened to Monticello after Jefferson’s death and I therefore do not cover the controversial question of their relationship in the book.

That said, I do provide a brief look at the house’s origins and Thomas Jefferson’s last years (1809-26) in the book. I mention that in a codicil to his will, Jefferson granted freedom to five of his enslaved men who had learned trades, all of whom were members of the Hemings family: Joe Fossett, Burwell Culbert and John, Madison and Eston Hemings. All five of the newly free men were also given houses. I also note that Burwell Culbert, Joe Fossett, and John Hemings joined with family members at Jefferson’s bedside during the last week of his life.

There was a lot more to the Hemings family at Monticello, of course. The newest special tour at Monticello, the Hemings Family Tour, helps visitors learn about seven members of the family, including Sally. Starting today, April 1, 2016, Monticello will offer this one hour, forty-five minute tour on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 1:45 p.m through November. The cost is $27 per person and the tour includes the standard first-floor house tour.

 

 This is a small-group tour that takes visitors into the house and along Mulberry Row, interpreting life in the house and plantation through the stories of the Hemings family members.

“Through their experiences, you will learn about the challenges faced by members of this large, important family at Monticello as they negotiated to maintain family ties and strove for freedom,” the Monticello web suite notes. “The tour will also highlight how the Hemingses straddled the color line, defying the stark racial dividing lines imposed in American slavery.” 

This special tour is another example of the admirable job the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which bought Monticello from Jefferson Levy in 1923, has done in recent decades documenting the lives of the enslaved families at Monticello. The Hemings family is among the best documented—not just at Monticello, but anywhere in the U.S.

Researchers at Monticello have, as the website notes, done a massive amount of documentary research, archaeological analysis and oral histories of Hemings descendants, and have come up with “related narratives of struggle, survival, and family bonds across more than three generations.” For more info on the tour, go to http://bit.ly/HemingsTour

The Foundation also has just made available a free new app, “Slavery at Monticello,” that complements the tour. For info on that, go to http://bit.ly/Hemingsapp

EVENTS:  I’m wrapping up my next book, the biography of Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” guy, which will come out in March of next year. I soon will be doing more speaking on my books, including Saving Monticello. Here’s what’s afoot this month:

·        Monday April 4 – 11:00 a.m. Pacific time appearance on “The Mike Slater Show” on KFMB radio in San Diego, discussing What So Proudly We Hailed, my biography of Francis Scott Key

·        Saturday, April 30 – Talk on Francis Scott Key for the Cameron Parish DAR Chapter’s annual meeting, Ashburn, Virginia

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including What So Proudly We Hailed and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline  That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

 Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

March 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 3                                                                     March 1, 2016

THE TERRACE RAILING: The public tour of Monticello ends on the one of the two long terraces that extend from the north and south sides of the building. The Chinese Chippendale-inspired white wooden railings around those terraces were installed by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (then known as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation) around 1940.

Ten years ago, the Foundation took a look at the weathered railings and decided they had to go. But instead of repairing the railings, the Foundation decided to reconstruct new ones using a detailed design that Thomas Jefferson drew up (and that still survives in the Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society) in 1824, two years before he died.

Those railings—which probably were the second ones that Jefferson designed for the terraces (the first designs are lost and most likely never were used)—call for vertical bars held in place by horizontal rails, a traditional English pail or picket fence design.

Although no one knows for sure, the best guess is that they were painted dark green. That’s the same color as the recently reconstructed window blinds in the house. The Monticello Restoration Department carefully examined three 1925 paintings of Monticello in which the railings are seen in a dark color, although it’s difficult to tell if it is green. But the Foundation has a fragment from one of the window blinds that confirms that they were green. The photo below is a sample of what the new railings will look like. 

 

 When I wrote Saving Monticello, I dealt only briefly with the terraces. What I found of note was that the terraces (and their railings) had all but rotted away by the time Uriah Levy purchased the house from James Turner Barclay in 1834. That’s because the house and grounds had been going downhill due to what we would call today an extreme lack of preventive maintenance during Jefferson’s declining years and Barclay’s 1831-34 ownership. 

I contacted Susan Stein, the Richard Gilder Senior Curator & Vice President for Museum Programs, and Gardiner Hallock, the Robert H. Smith Director of Restoration at Monticello, to see if they could shed some historical light on the terrace railing situation during the 90 or so years when the Levy family owned Monticello (from 1834-1923). Susan and Gardiner told me that it’s tough to say when the Jefferson railings were removed and what the railings would have looked like during Uriah Levy’s ownership—if Levy even had installed railings on the terraces.

Since there are no photographs (the earliest one was taken in the early 1870s), all we have to go on is an 1830s engraving that shows a Chinese-inspired railing on the North Terrace. However, as Gardiner told me, that image “is not 100 percent accurate because some elements are left off and the artist added some features, like second floor windows.” The best guess is that, as I wrote in the book, the terraces—railings and all—had been gutted and were gone during UPL’s time (1834-62) and during the next seventeen years when the family fought over his will and Monticello was under the care of Joel Wheeler, the caretaker who didn’t take very good care of the place.

As for Jefferson Levy’s ownership (1879-1923), photographs from 1912 show “short sections of horizontal railings at the ends the covered passages,” Gardiner said. “Since the roof over the North Dependency was missing at this point, I think these rails were a safety feature meant to keep visitors from hurting themselves.”

A 1924 photo, though, shows what looks like a Chinese railing on the North Terrace. The best guess is that Monticello’s restoration guru, Fiske Kimball, got rid of those railings, since he construed his job as erasing all traces of the nearly 90-year ownership of Monticello by the Levy family.

As I wrote in Saving Monticello, “The Foundation did not want [Monticello] to be a Levy shrine,” the Foundation’s Fred Kuper told the author Charles Hosmer. Therefore, as Hosmer put it, “everything having to do with the Levys was removed.” That included bathrooms, a bath tub and a stairway installed by Jefferson Levy, along with the roof dormers he added, and an enormous amount of furniture and furnishings that Levy conveyed to the Foundation with the sale of the property—and the Chinese terrace railings.

EVENTS:  Here’s a rundown on my March events. I’m wrapping up my next book, the biography of Barry Sadler, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” guy, and will be getting back into doing more talks on my books. 

Here’s a rundown on my March events:

·        Friday, March 11 – morning talk on Francis Scott Key at the 120^th Virginia State DAR Conference at the Downtown Richmond Marriott Hotel. 

·        Saturday, March 19 – morning workshop on researching nonfiction books at the Samuels Authorcon event at the Samuels Library in Front Royal, Virginia. For info, email Bill Powell at bill@billpowell.org

·        Monday, March 21 – afternoon talk on Francis Scott Key at the Glebe in Daleville, Virginia

·        Monday, March 28 – evening talk on Francis Scott Key at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. for a private event.

 

Please email me if you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello—or for any of my other books, including What So Proudly We Hailed, my Francis Scott Key biography, and Lafayette: Idealist General, my concise bio of the Marquis de Lafayette—at marc527psc@aol.com 

For more details on other upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline  That’s the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com Or go to this page of my website: http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.html to order copies through my local bookstore, Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

February 2016

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIII, Number 2                                                                     February 1, 2016

DETAILED & FASCINATING: Any article that ends with “Stop at the Monticello gift shop and buy ‘Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built,’ by Marc Leepson. It’s a fast-paced but detailed and fascinating read” is worth revisiting. So I’m pleased to present excerpts of Judith Fein’s excellent 2011 article on the Levys and Monticello that appeared in the L.A. Times. It contains a good summary of the heart of Saving Monticello. You can read the entire article at: http://bit.ly/LATimesLevys

I’ve never met an American who didn’t have a soft spot in his heart for Thomas Jefferson, and who didn’t love Monticello. …After Jefferson retired from the presidency, he went to live full-time in Monticello, and the house is a testament to Jefferson’s architectural genius; in fact, he called it his “essay in architecture.” The 11,000-square-foot neoclassical mansion has 21 rooms, and from the moment you walk past the stone columns and set foot in the reception and waiting room, with its grass-green floor and museum-like exhibits of natural history specimens and Native American and African artifacts, you know you are in the domain of a man of taste, knowledge, broad interests and probably unlimited resources. Alas, even presidential resources can run out. Unlike today’s politicians, the first men who helmed our fledgling nation often left office penniless and in debt. Jefferson was no exception. By the time he died, he was in the hole some $100,000 ($2 million today), and it took decades for his heirs to eliminate the debt.…

His heirs could not afford to keep Monticello and, to the shock and sadness of everyone who adored and admired the book room (which held more than 6,000 volumes), bedroom (where his bed was surrounded by the latest gadgets and technological inventions), dining room (with its dumbwaiters, hidden in the fireplace, which brought wine up from the cellar) guestrooms, art collection and dome room, the plantation had to be sold.

Historical treasure or not, no one wanted it. In 1827, Jefferson’s daughter and grandson auctioned off his slaves and other possessions, right down to stored grain and farm equipment. The empty house decayed from lack of upkeep. Finally, the estate was purchased by James Turner Barclay for $7,000, but he held onto it for just three years. And this is where our story begins.

A hint about the estate’s next owner is still at Monticello, on Mulberry Row, next to slave and work cabins, prodigious vegetable gardens and mulberry trees. There, a rather nondescript tomb is the final resting place of Rachel Levy, [above] mother of Monticello’s third owner, Uriah P. Levy. The plantation remained in the Levy (pronounced “levee”) family for 89 years. In fact, it is postulated that Uriah Levy was a founder of America’s historic preservation movement because, at that time and well into the 20th century, there was no great interest in maintaining historical homes and sites.

….It is thanks to Uriah Levy that the clock and other possessions and designs of Thomas Jefferson are available to tourists today. If he hadn’t spent a huge amount of money on the restoration and upkeep of Monticello, it would have sunk into sad dilapidation.

….When he died childless, his odd and obscure will was contested by his family heirs for l7 years as the house decayed. Finally, in 1879, his nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy (the name certainly suggests family patriotism), gained the title to the property. He was a handsome and fabulously wealthy New York lawyer, real estate mogul, stock speculator and three-term U.S. congressman. He never married and indicated on several occasions that he dedicated his life and fortune to the upkeep, restoration and refurbishing (in true Jeffersonian style) of Monticello.

….. J. M. Levy opened Monticello to vast numbers of tourists, claimed to live by Jeffersonian principles, lavishly entertained luminaries like Theodore Roosevelt, foreign ambassadors and U.S. congressmen, but was still attacked for being a latter-day Shylock and exploiting Thomas Jefferson’s memory. There was a movement to wrest ownership away from him and hand it to the government. ….J.M. Levy, who had lived the high life for so long, was beset by financial difficulties, and, after holding out as long as he could, finally agreed to sell Monticello for $500,000 to the government. … Finally, the asking price was met by a private group — the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  Reportedly, J.M. Levy burst out crying when he signed over the deed to his beloved estate.  He died insolvent before his 72nd birthday.

When you go, pause for a moment at Rachel Levy’s tomb. If you have the inclination, thank Uriah and Jefferson Levy for preserving what is now one of the most beloved tourist destinations in America.

By the way, the Monticello Shop lists Saving Monticello among its best-selling books: http://www.monticelloshop.org/book-store-best-sellers.html

MISQUOTES:  SM Newsletter subscriber Anna Berkes, the Research Librarian at Monticello’s Jefferson Library who also runs the on-line Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, is—well—encyclopedic in her knowledge about Mr. Jefferson. I just came across a fascinating entry she wrote in the Encyclopedia called “Spurious Quotations.” It’s a carefully annotated list of more than fifty quotes that have been attributed to the Sage of Monticello—quotes that are made up.

A few examples:

• “Beer, if drunk with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.”
• “Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.”
• “Without God, liberty will not last.”

A Jefferson Quote—not

So we can add Thomas Jefferson to the oft-misquoted list headed by Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln. Speaking of which, I recently learned that a Twain “quote” I had been quoting for decades, is made up. I’m sure you’ve heard it: “I spent the coldest winter of my life on summer in San Francisco.” Twain also didn’t say, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

To read all the spurious Jefferson quotes, go to the entire entry, go to www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/spurious-quotations

EVENTS:  I have just one event in February—a talk on Francis Scott Key at The Glebe retirement community in Daleville, Va., on the 15^th—as I am continue operating in full-time writing mode on  my next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, the U.S. Army Sergeant who wrote and performed “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” The pub date has been changed. It’ll now be in March of 2017.

If you’d like to arrange an event for any of my books, email marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on upcoming events, go to http://bit.ly/SMOnline, the “Author Events” page on my website, www.marcleepson.com

Facebook, Twitter: If you’re on Facebook, please send me a friend request. If you’re on Twitter, I’d love to have you as a follower.

Gift Ideas:  If you would like a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, e-mail me at Marc527psc@aol.com

Or go to http://marcleepson.com/signedbooks.htmlto order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.