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