December 2015

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 12                                                                    December 1, 2015

JEFFERSON’S RULES: Browsing through the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s excellent on-line Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, I came across something I hadn’t seen before, Thomas Jefferson’s “Canons of Conduct,” a list of axioms for personal behavior.

Jefferson sent versions of the list to his children and grandchildren; the entry in the TJ Encyclopedia—written by SM Newsletter subscriber Anna Berkes, the research librarian at Monticello’s Jefferson Library who manages the Encyclopedia—includes a reproduction of one of the lists from a letter Jefferson sent to his granddaughter Cornelia Jefferson Randolph. To wit:

A DOZEN CANONS OF CONDUCT IN LIFE

1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.

2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.

5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves!

6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

7. We never repent of having eat[en] too little.

8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.

9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happen’d!

10. Take things always by their smooth handle.

11. Think as you please, & so let others, & you will have no disputes.

12. When angry, count 10 before you speak; if very angry, 100.

Jefferson, Berkes writes, “sent a slightly shorter version of the above list to Paul Clay, the son of his friend Charles Clay, in 1817, and a still more refined version in 1825 to John Spear Smith.”  In his 1825 letter, Jefferson listed a “decalogue of canons for observation in practical life.” To wit:

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

Never spend your money before you have it.

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

 Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!

Take things always by their smooth handle.

When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred

It’s interesting to note that Thomas Jefferson himself conspicuously did not follow at least two of the Canon items: spending money before you have it and watching his pennies.

As I noted in Saving Monticello, Jefferson loved spending money (that he had—and that he did not have) and wound up over $107,000 in debt when he died. That financial burden forced his family (led by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph and grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph) to sell all of the land they inherited, as well as the furniture and furnishings at Monticello—and then, in 1831, Monticello itself.

To read the entire entry, go to www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/canons-conduct

EVENTS:  I have just two events in December, as I am now 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 is November of 2016.

• Tuesday, December 1 – book signing (of all of my books) at the Williamsburg, Virginia DAR Chapter’s annual Holiday Bazaar event at Colonial Country Club.
• Thursday, December 10 – a talk on Saving Monticello for the Hanukkah Program at the Pentagon Chapel in Washington, D.C.

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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

November 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 11                                                                    November 1, 2015

URIAH LEVY’S GIFT: I recently came across an excellent on-line article on the history of the statue of Thomas Jefferson that Uriah Levy commissioned in 1833 that today is the only privately donated statue in Statuary Hall in the Rontuda of the U.S. Capitol.

The article, by Linda Tederick, Assistant Curator at The White House, has great images and uses Saving Monticello as one of its main sources.It tells the entire story of how Uriah Levy commissioned the statue (from the famed French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d'Angers in Paris in the fall of 1832) and how it wound up in the Capitol—focusing, naturally, on the time that it was displayed on the White House lawn.  

As I noted in the book Levy was in Paris taking time off from his U.S. Navy duties. He paid a visit to the 75-year-old Marquis de Lafayette, who had been a close friend of Jefferson’s since they met in Richmond during the Revolutionary War. Lafayette, who died in 1834, loaned Levy a portrait of Jefferson by the American painter Thomas Sully, which David used as his model for Jefferson's face.

Levy stayed in Paris until David completed the statue early in 1834. It stands seven-and-a-half feet tall and depicts Jefferson holding a quill pen in his right hand. In his left is an etched, word-for-word copy of the Declaration of Independence, complete with signatures, including the large “John Hancock.” Behind him are two large books, topped with a laurel wreath. The statue was cast in bronze, and Levy shipped both the finished statue and the plaster mold used to cast it to the United States.

On February 6, 1834, he presented the painted plaster model to the City of New York. The statue was placed on the second floor of the Rotunda at City Hall. It was moved into the ornate City Council Chamber in the 1950s where today it is the only piece of sculpture in a room filled with oil portraits.

A month after he gave the model to New York City, Uriah Levy presented the bronze Jefferson to the nation. He had the words “Presented by Uriah Phillips Levy of the United States Navy to his fellow citizens, 1833,” etched on one side of the statue's bronze base. It was displayed inside the Capitol, in the Rotunda.

Sometime during the James K. Polk administration (1845-1949) the statue was removed from the Rotunda. It was shipped up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House where, with the permission of President Polk, it was placed on the grounds on the north side facing Lafayette Park. The photo above was taken around in the 1860s. It remained there until 1874 when the statue was cleaned up (it had suffered badly from exposure to the elements) and moved into National Statuary Hall in the Capitol Rotunda, where it stands today.

To read the article, go to www.whitehousehistory.org/uriah-levys-gift-to-the-nation

TEEN-AGED MARTHA: A new cache of letters, including a group of previously private missives written by Martha Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter who lived at Monticello with her eleven children and inherited the place after her father died in 1826. The letters were written when Martha she was in Paris while her father was U.S. Minister to France (1784-89). They recently have been leant to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation—the folks who own and operate Monticello—by a group of Jefferson descendants.

You can read the letters—and many other documents—on the “Jefferson Quotes and Family Letters” page on the Monticello web site at http://tjrs.monticello.org

Other documents in this collection were compiled by Martha Randolph’s granddaughter Martha Jefferson Trist Burke. They include descriptions and reminiscences about the cabin of John and Priscilla Hemmings, who were enslaved at Monticello. That material has helped Foundation’s Curatorial Department interpret and present that space.

EVENTS:  I have four events in September, as I continue researching 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 is November of 2016.

• Saturday, November 7 – A talk on the Marquis de Lafayette, and book signing for the Henry Clay DAR Chapter in Annandale, Virginia
• Saturday, November 14 – A talk on Saving Monticello for the Providence DAR Chapter in Fairfax City, Virginia.
• Thursday, November 19 – A talk and book signing at the Glen Allen Branch Library, 10501 Staples Mill Rd., Glen Allen, Va. on Lafayette. The event is free and open to the public. For info, call 804-290-9500.
• Friday, November 20 – A talk on the writing process for the Vintage Ladies of Northern Virginia, in Brunswick, Maryland
• Saturday, November 21 – A talk on Lafayette and book signing for the Colonel William Grayson SAR Chapter in Haymarket, Virginia.

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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

October 2015

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 10                                                                    October 1, 2015

NOT GEORGE WYTHE RANDOLPH: In last month’s issue in the lead item about Thomas Jefferson’s gravesite, I included the photograph of the vandalized grave marker I used in the book after securing permission to do so from the University of Virginia Library’s Special Collections Department. Back in 2000, I purchased a print of the photo (right) from Special Collections that my publisher, Free Press, reproduced for the book. On the back of the photo are the words: “Item: George Wythe Randolph, ca. 1871 at T.J. Gravesite.”

Since I knew that over the years visitors had taken souvenir chippings off Jefferson’s gravestone, and that the stone was replaced by Congress in the 1880s—and given the wording on the photo—the caption I came up with for the book reads: “George Wythe Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s youngest grandchild, at the Jefferson gravesite at Monticello circa 1871” along with two more sentences (I like to use long photo captions in my books) explaining the tourist chippings and Congress’s 1882 appropriation of $10,000 for a new monument.

Well, it turns out that a mistake was made. The man in the photo most certainly isn’t George Wythe Randolph (in photo below—and yes, that’s him), as he died of tuberculosis in 1867. Randolph, a lawyer and Confederate Army general, served as the South’s Secretary of War from March 1862 until November of that year when he resigned for health reasons.

A quick check of the U-Va. Special Collections web site found that the photo, which is described as “Mr. Randolph’s graveyard,” is actually of George Randolph’s grave.

Bill Burgan, an SM Newsletter subscriber, a Facebook friend of mine—and, more importantly, a long-time guide at Monticello—pointed that out to me after he received the newsletter.

So, who is the young man in the photo? He “is much younger than G.W. Randolph would have been in the 1860s.” Bill told me. “It does have a superficial resemblance, but George and his wife had no descendants, so the person is most likely a friend of the photographer or perhaps one of the many GWR nephews.”

THE LEVY CHAPEL: It seems (almost) like yesterday that the U.S. Naval Academy dedicated the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Chapel adjacent to Bancroft Hall on the Academy’s grounds. I was fortunate enough to attend the ribbon-cutting ten years ago, on September 18, 2005, for the dedication, along with several hundred other guests.

It was a great occasion, marking the opening of the first Jewish Chapel at the Naval Academy. It is  housed in an impressive building designed with a dome on the main entrance in recognitions of Uriah Levy’s ownership of Monticello.

A tenth anniversary commemoration will take place on November 6-7 at the Levy Center’s Miller Chapel. It will include services on Friday and Saturday evening and a reception after the Saturday Oneg Shabbat service. The event is free and open to the public. For info, email info@fojcusna.org

EVENTS:  I only have one event in October as I have begun the full-time writing phase of 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 is November of 2016.

The photo of Sadler at left was taken in Guatemala in the mid-eighties. Sadler moved there in 1983 to write books and take part in other activities involving weapons, such as the AK 47 he’s holding in this picture a friend of his loaned to me to use in the book.

Barry Sadler died in November of 1989, a little more than a year after he took a bullet to the head in a taxi cab in Guatemala City. There are several theories about exactly what happened in that taxi cab. Stay tuned.

My one event this month will take place on Monday, October 12, a talk on the Marquis de Lafayette for the local chapter of the Colonial Dames of the XVII^th Century at the historic Purcellville Train Station in P-ville, Virginia, not far from where I live in Loudoun County, Va.

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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

Photo credit: George Wythe Randolph at Jefferson’s grave: University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

September 1, 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 9                                                                      September 1, 2015

JEFFERSON’S GRAVESITE: In the fourteen years since Saving Monticello first was published I have been asked more than a few times if the National Park Service—or some other federal entity—owns Monticello. The answer is that Monticello is not owned by the federal government. It is owned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, a private nonprofit formed in 1923 to buy Monticello from Jefferson Levy and to run it as a shrine to the nation’s third President.

“The federal government doesn’t have anything to do with it,” I usually say. However, there was one instance in the long history of Jefferson’s mountain that the federal government did contribute financially. As I mentioned in the book, in 1878 Congress appropriated $5,000 to pay for a new monument over Jefferson’s grave as the one erected after he died in 1826 had been repeatedly vandalized by souvenir hunters who routinely took chippings off the stone. That’s a picture from the book of the desecrated monument above with Jefferson’s youngest grandchild, George Wythe Randolph, taken around 1871.

There was a caveat with that federal money, though. The appropriation would come only if Jefferson’s descendants—who owned the graveyard as it had never conveyed after the family sold the property in 1831—gave title to the graveyard to the government.

As it happened, the descendants did not accept Congress’s conditions in 1878. Four years later, however, in April 1882, Congress—with no strings attached—appropriated $10,000 for the erection of a monument over the Sage of Monticello’s grave and for other improvements to the site.

A new, 18-foot granite monument was placed on Jefferson’s grave that fall. Repairs were made to six other graves, a new iron fence was installed, and the entire site was graded, reseeded and re-sodded. As the plaque above notes, the beautifully maintained graveyard remains today in the hands of the Jefferson family—a group of descendants who are members of The Monticello Association.

EVENTS:  I have four events in September, as I continue researching 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 is November of 2016.

• Thursday, September 10 – A talk on my latest book, What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life and book signing for the Fairfax Resolves SAR Chapter in Sterling, Virginia.
• Saturday, September 12 – A talk on the Francis Scott Key book and book signing for the Old Dominion DAR Chapter in Richmond, Virginia
• Saturday, September 19 – A talk on the Key book and book signing for the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.
• Thursday, September 24 A 1:00 p.m. talk on the Key book and book signing for Live & Learn Bethesda in 4805 Edgemoor Land Bethesda, Maryland. For info, call 301-740-6150; email info@liveandlearnbethesda or go to http://liveandlearnbethesda.org Open to the public for a small fee.

 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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

Photo credit: George Wythe Randolph at Jefferson’s grave: University of Virginia, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

August 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 8                                                                   August 1, 2015

THE MIKVEH ISRAELS: The Levy family had close associations with two pioneering American Hebrew congregations called Mikveh Israel. Last month I included a terrific photo by SM Newsletter subscriber Lorri Mills of the inside of Mikveh Israel in Savannah—the third oldest Jewish congregation in America. Uriah Levy’s great great grandfather, Dr. Samuel Nunez, was among the founders of Mikveh Israel in Savannah.

Dr. Nunez, a physician who opened the first pharmacy in Georgia where he specialized in making medicines out of imported and native-grown herbs, was a close friend of the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley. Dr. Nunez also was a crypto Sephardic Jew who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition in Lisbon with his family, fled to London, and came to the colony of Georgia with several other Jewish families in June of 1733.

Samuel Nunez helped found Mikveh Israel in Savannah (above) in July 1735. To this day the congregation uses the Torah that was brought to Savannah by Dr. Nunez and the other Jews who settled the city in 1733.

Uriah Levy’s immediate family worshipped at Mikveh Israeli in Philadelphia, where he was born in 1792. Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia was founded in 1740 and bills itself as the “Synagogue of the American Revolution,” the “oldest formal congregation in Philadelphia,” and the “oldest continuous synagogue in the United States.”

As I noted in Saving Monticello, Uriah Levy’s maternal grandfather, Jonas Phillips, was instrumental in raising funds to purchase a new building for Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia in 1782. He later was elected the president of the Congregation. As the head of the congregation, Jonas Phillips (a Revolutionary War patriot who served in a local militia unit) invited George Washington to attend the dedication ceremonies of its new building.

I had had the pleasure of taking part in ceremonies in 2011 dedicating a statue to Uriah Levy outside Mikveh Israel. The Congregation is in Center City Philadelphia not far from many historic sites, including Christ Church, the Betsy Ross House, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell—and the National Museum of American Jewish History.

We were in Philly last month for a wedding and I took these pics of the statute:

EVENTS:  Nothing scheduled for the month of August, as I am concentrating on my next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, the Green Beret Army Sergeant who wrote and performed “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” the No. 1 song of the year 1966.

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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

July 1, 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 7                                                                      July 1, 2015

FROM HARLEY LEWIS: I heard recently from Harley Lewis, Jefferson Levy’s great grandniece, and the member of her family who has taken the strongest interest in Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s Monticello legacy. After reading last month’s SM Newsletter, which featured the recent renovations of the upstairs rooms at Monticello, she wrote to me with memories of stories that her mother and grandmother told of visiting Monticello when Jefferson Levy owned the place in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Mrs. Lewis wrote: “How I wish I could turn back the clock and be able to ask questions of my mother and grandmother on their stays at Monticello. It was to them just part of their life, not extraordinary and no different than going on vacation to the Jersey shore or Saratoga.”

Harley Lewis’s mother—Jefferson Levy’s niece Frances Wolf Levy Lewis—loved visiting Monticello as a child. “It was a working farm and her fondest memories were the ponies and pony cart rides, along with the other livestock,” Harley Lewis told me.

“However for her mother, my grandmother [Lillian Hendricks Wolf], it was a different story. She went as seldom as possible because of the logistics of packing and sending an entourage of servants, including two nursemaids for the children, the train ride to Charlottesville, horse-drawn carriages up the mountain, sleepless nights in sweltering hot bedrooms, plus a bathtub not to her liking [so] she had a lining made to fit its contours.”

Her grandmother and mother, Harley Lewis said, “often opted to remain in the comfort of her home and let my grandfather lead the expedition” from New York to Charlottesville.

INSIDE MIKVEH ISRAEL: I also heard recently from SM Newsletter subscriber Lorri Mills, who had visited Mikveh Israel, the Sephardic synagogue in Savannah. The third-oldest Jewish congregation in America, and the first in Georgia, it was founded in July of 1735 by Uriah Levy’s great, great grandfather Dr. Samuel Nunez, and a group of other Jews who came there in the summer of 1733, fleeing Portugal and the Spanish Inquisition. The magnificent current Neo-Gothic building was consecrated in 1878.

Ms. Mills kindly gave me permission to use these this photo of the inside of that historic building.

 

EVENTS:  Here’s a rundown on my July events. I only have two as I am working full time these days on my next book, a biography of Barry Sadler, the Green Beret Army Sergeant who wrote and performed “The Ballad of the Green Berets,” the No. 1 song of the year 1966. Barry Sadler had an amazing life before, during and after that song became a cultural phenomenon. The pub date will be in the fall of 2016. Stay tuned.

• Thursday, July 2, a talk on my Francis Scott Key biography, What So Proudly We Hailed, and book signing at 12:00 noon at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. Info: www.vahistorical.org

 

• Sunday, July 5, a talk on Saving Monticello and book signing at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, 1811 R Street, NW in Washington, D.C. The talk begins at 1:00 and is free and open to the public. Info: www.nmajmh.org

If you’d like to arrange an event for any of my books, email marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other 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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed.  

June 1, 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 6                                                             June 1, 2015

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS:  When I was doing the research for Saving Monticello in 1999 and 2000, I had several meetings with Susan Stein, the renowned curator on Jefferson’s Mountain. We met in her small office located upstairs on the second floor of Thomas Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture. The rest of the rooms up there—bedrooms in Thomas Jefferson’s day—remained empty and unvisited as the second floor (including the Dome Room) was closed to the public.

The rooms upstairs remained all but empty for years after Susan moved her office elsewhere on the property. But several years ago, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation began restoring several of the upstairs rooms and offering special tours. Then, on May 2, the Foundation announced what’s being called a “milestone” in their mission to restore Monticello to what the place looked like when Thomas Jefferson lived there.

Called “The Mountaintop Project,” the milestone consists of the full restoration and furnishing of nine upstairs rooms. Those are the bedrooms where Thomas Jefferson’s grown daughter Martha Randolph and her eleven children lived after Jefferson’s wife (also Martha) had died and his daughter Martha—known as Patsy as a child—brought her family to her childhood home to live.

 “It’s the first time in ninety-two years we’ve seen the upstairs rooms fully furnished,” said Leslie Greene Bowman, the Foundation’s president and CEO.

Those newly restored and furnished bedrooms are where Patsy and her children moved when  her father retired from the presidency in 1809 and came back to Monticello to live there full time.
Martha and the children were living there when she was forced to sell Monticello in 1831, five years after Thomas Jefferson’s death, to try to pay off the debts she inherited from her father—a story I tell in detail in Saving Monticello.

The Mountaintop Project also includes the recreation of two log cabins along Mulberry Row (where Uriah Levy’s mother Rachel is buried) where John and Priscilla Hemings, an enslaved couple, lived, as well as a workshop. This “allows us to tell the stories of the family, servants, and slaves who lived and worked in those rooms and gives a fuller picture of what life at Monticello was really like,” Leslie Bowman said.

The main benefactor of the Mountaintop Project, David M. Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, made a big announcement at a dinner on May at Monticello: that he was donating $10 million to Monticello, matching the amount he gave the Foundation in 2013.

In 2013, Rubenstein told The Washington Post, he met with Leslie Bowman at Monticello, and—noticing that some rehab work needed to be done—said, “I’m happy to help in some way What would it take to fix it?”

“She said it would probably take about $20 million,” Rubenstein said. “I said, ‘Okay, let me give you ten, see what progress you make, and then if it works out, I’ll give you another ten.’”

“They did a very good job on the first ten,” he said, “and now this is the second ten.”

To which Bowman replied: “I’m almost speechless with excitement.”

EVENTS:  Here’s a rundown on my June events, two of which deal with my book, Lafayette: Idealist General, in conjunction with the visit in June of the replica ship L’Hermione, which Lafayette sailed on his second trip to the U.S. in 1780.

• Tuesday, June 9 – At 7:00 p.m. I’ll be introducing a film screening of the one-act play, Lafayette, at the Lyceum in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. The historic building, which serves as Alexandria’s History Museum, is located at 201 South Washington Street. We’ll have a Q&A after the screening along with a book signing. Info: 703-746-4994
• Saturday, June 13 – 2:00 p.m. talk on Francis Scott Key and book signing at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., 801 K Street, N.W. at Mount Vernon Square in Downtown D.C. Free and open to the public. Info, 202-249-3955
• Sunday, June 14 – 2:00 p.m. talk on Saving Monticello and book signing at historic Unison Store, 21028 Unison Road in Unison, Virginia, here in Western Loudoun County, Va. Free and open to the public. Info: www.unisonva.org
• Saturday, June 20 – 2:00 p.m. talk and book signing on Lafayette at historic Oakwood near Warrenton, Virginia. For info on this fund-raising event for the Mosby Heritage Area Association, call 540-687-6681 or go to www.mosbyheritagearea.org

If you’d like to arrange an event for any of my books, email marc527psc@aol.com  For more details on other 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.html to order copies through Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, Virginia. We also have copies of Desperate Engagement, Flag, Lafayette, and What So Proudly We Hailed. 

May 1, 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 5                                                             May 1, 2015

THE JEWS IN SAVANNAH:  One thing that continues to fascinate me is the story of Uriah Levy’s great-great grandfather Dr. Samuel Nunez and his escape from the Inquisition in Portugal with his family first to England, and then to Savannah, Georgia, in 1733. I covered that in Saving Monticello, citing several sources, including “The Jews in Savannah,” an article in the November 1843 issue of The Occident and Jewish Advocate written by Mordecai Sheftall, a descendant of one of the families that came to Savannah with the Nunez family.

I dug that article out of one of the archives I visited when doing the research for the book. It’s now on line on the Jewish history.com website. That organization has, since 1998, been posting texts of historical documents that only had been available to the public in historical society and other archives or on microfilm. Here’s the link to the article: http://bit.ly/NunezSavannah

 Mordecai Sheftall was a descendant of one of the Jewish families that arrived with the Nunezes in Savannah in 1733. His article was based on the records of his grandfather Benjamin Sheftall and his father, Levi Sheftall, who recorded “every important event connected with the condition of the Israelites: arrivals, departures, marriages, births, deaths, &c., to the first of July in the year 1808.”

The Jews who came to Savannah from London were a mixture of Sephardic and Ashkenasic. They “brought with them a Safer Tora, with two cloaks, and a Circumcision Box, which were given to them by Mr. Lindo, a merchant in London, for the use of the congregation they intended to establish,” the article notes.

The “Israelites who came to Savannah paid their passage,” the article says, “laid in all necessary supplies for their intended voyage, and were in nowise dependent on the favour or charity of the British crown for one dollar to facilitate their emigration.”

The passage across the Atlantic on The William and Sarah, Mr. Shaftell wrotes, “was a disagreeable and boisterous one; gale succeeded gale, and the ship came near being wrecked off the coast of North Carolina, and was forced to seek safety in ‘New Inlet,’ where she was necessarily detained for some weeks. She again set sail, and arrived and landed her passengers in Savannah on the 11th day of July, 1733.”

The first English settlers, led by James Oglethrope, had arrived at Yamacraw Bluff on the Savannah River just five months before, on February 13, 1733. That’s when they formed Georgia, the last of the original thirteen British North American colonies. The city’s lots were apportioned just days before the Jewish families arrived.

Soon after they arrived, in July of 1733, the Sephardic families decided to start a synagogue in a rented house on Market Square. They named it Kahal Kadosh Mickve Israel, “Holy Congregation, Hope of Israel.” That congregation, since 1878, has had its home in an imposing neo-Gothic building on Monterey Square (above). It was the first Jewish congregation in the American South, and is the third-oldest in the United States. The congregation still uses the 1733 torah in its annual Shabbat anniversary service.

Thanks to Shannon Foley Slaughter of the Descendants of Dr. Samuel Nunez Facebook Group for pointing me to the article.

EVENTS:  Here’s a rundown on my May events, four of which deal with my book, Lafayette: Idealist General, in preparation for the visit in June of the replica ship L’Hermione, which Lafayette sailed on his second trip to the U.S. in 1780.

·       Saturday, May 2 – Book signing at the Gray Ghost Vineyards Civil War Authors Day, beginning a 11:00 a.m. 14706 Lee Highway, Amissville, Virginia. Info: 540- 937-4869. Or go to  

• Tuesday, May 5 –talk on Saving Monticello for a Historic Preservation class at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md.
• Thursday, May 14 – 7:00 p.m. talk on the Marquis de Lafayette and book signing at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia. Sponsored by the Alexandria-Caen Sister City Committee. Open to the public. Wine and dessert reception follows the talk. Info: http://herolafayette.eventbrite.com
• Saturday, May 16 – talk on Lafayette for the Washington, D.C., Eleanor Wilson DAR Chapter, Middleburg, Virginia
• Friday, May 22 – 7:00 p.m. talk on Lafayette and book signing at the Free-Lance StarrBuilding, Fredericksburg, Virginia, sponsored by the Fredericksburg Sister City Association. 616        Amelia Street, Fredericksburg, Va. Free, open to the public.
• Sunday, Mar 24 – 3:00 p.m. talk on Lafayette and book signing at York Hall, Yorktown, Virginia, sponsored by the York County Historical Committee. 301 Main St., Yorktown, Va.Info: 757-890-3508. Free, open to the public. 

April 1, 2015

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XII, Number 4                                                                      April 1, 2015

ON JEFFERSON LEVY: In my ongoing quest to discover all there is to know about the Levy family that didn’t make it into Saving Monticello, I recently came across two items dealing with Jefferson Levy that shed light on his character and personality.

The first is a newspaper account that contains his strong reaction to the momentous December 10, 1912, vote in the House of Representatives. That’s the one that defeated a resolution that would have condemned Monticello, taken in from Levy, and made into a government-run shrine to Thomas Jefferson. As I noted in the book, the bill went down 141-101.

Jefferson Levy was a member of the House at the time. Naturally, he voted against the bill that would have taken Monticello from him. And why not—he had owned Monticello since 1879 and had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars repairing, restoring, preserving and furnishing Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture.

In the book I described Levy’s reaction after the vote by quoting from The New York Times, which reported that he was “jubilant.” The paper went on to say that Levy “issued a statement saying he was grateful for the support he had received ‘during this trying ordeal.’”

I left the rest of the quote out of the book. But when I recently re-read it, I was intrigued by what he said. Here’s the entire quote, in which Jefferson Levy addresses the baseless charges that he wouldn’t let members of the public onto the grounds of Monticello and that he made things difficult for Jefferson descendants when they wanted to visit the family cemetery on the grounds of Monticello.

“I am deeply grateful to the American people for their thoughtful consideration during this trying ordeal, when it has been sought to take from me against my will property which I love both because of its association with that great statesman, Thomas Jefferson, and because to me it answers to the name of home, which all that word signifies to anyone.

“Of Monticello it may well be said that under private ownership it has been more available to the public than has Mount Vernon, in that no one desiring to pay a tribute to the memory of Thomas Jefferson has been turned aside nor fee accepted from his hand.”

A little deconstruction of that statement is in order. First, using the phrase “trying ordeal” confirms what I’ve gleaned elsewhere that the stern and driven businessman was deeply hurt by the effort to take Monticello from him.

Second, I strongly doubt that that “the American people” provided significant “consideration” to Levy during that year as the campaign to take Monticello from him reached the halls of Congress. Levy did have support on Capitol Hill (as evidenced by the vote), but I didn’t find much, if any, outpouring for him from “the American people” to keep Monticello as his private home.

Speaking of his “home,” Monticello was not it. Jefferson Levy used the place as his vacation getaway, visiting regularly, but his true home was in New York City. Still, as Levy had owned and lived in Monticello (at times) for thirty-three years, it is very possible that he considered it at least one of his homes.

Lastly, it also is true that Jefferson Levy did allow visitors (bidden and unbidden) to visit the grounds at Monticello. However, at one time he did charge a nominal fee, much as was the case at Mount Vernon.

Fast forward to February 1919 after Jefferson Levy had fended off the effort to take Monticello from him. I found an article in the Cavalier Daily of March 1 that shed some positive light on the owner of Monticello. It seems that President Woodrow Wilson had just had a stroke (he would have a much more serious one in October) and the article reported that Levy offered Monticello as a place for Wilson “to recover from his illness.”

Wilson, for one thing, “was feeling much better,” according to his family physician, Dr. Cary Grayson, the article noted.

That generous offer from one Democratic politician to another was turned down.

And the President also “made it a rule since he entered the White House not to accept the hospitality of any except members of his family and those who were his intimate friends before he became executive.”

That dictum, the article noted, “would prevent his accepting Mr. Levy’s offer.”

EVENTS:  Here’s a rundown on my April events.

·        Saturday and Sunday, April 11 and 12 – Talks at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday and 1:00 p.m on Sunday on the Marquis de Lafayette at the aptly named Lafayette Inn and Restaurant in Stanardsville, Virginia. For info, call 434-985-6345 or go to www.thelafayetteinn.com

• Tuesday, April 14 – evening talk on Francis Scott Key at Shenandoah University, Winchester, Virginia. Free and open to the public
• Sunday, April 26 – Afternoon talk for the Loudoun County Fine Arts Association