June 2020

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XVII, Number 6                                                          June 1, 2020

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

UNCLE JEFF: Jefferson Levy’s mother Fanny served as his unofficial hostess at Monticello soon after the life-long bachelor bought out his uncle’s heirs and gained control of the property in 1872. Following Fanny Levy’s death in 1893, Jefferson Levy’s sister, Amelia Mayhoff, took over that job.

As I noted in Saving Monticello, Amelia Levy had married Carl Mayhoff, a New York City cotton broker, in 1890. They lived most of the year in New York City on East 34th Street, the same block where Jefferson Levy lived. The Mayhoff’s son, Monroe, was born in 1897.

Sisters Agnes and Frances Levy with their cousin, Monroe Levy, on the lawn circa 1902

During the seasons when she was in charge at Monticello, Amelia Mayhoff arranged innumerable social events, with and without her brother present. She and her husband occupied a suite of rooms on the first floor. 

The other family members who spent the most time at Monticello were Jefferson Levy and Amelia Mayhoff’s brother L. Napoleon, his wife Lilian Hendricks Wolff, and their four daughters—Frances, Agnes, Florence, and Alma. The account I gave of their days at Monticello in the book was primarily based on a mid-1970s interview with Florence Levy Forsch—along with copies of hand-written letters her older sister, Frances Wolff Levy Lewis, wrote from Monticello in 1902 when she was nine years old.

Uncle Jeff

Just last week, Frances Lewis’ grandson Richard Lewis kindly sent me two pages from a short, unpublished memoir she wrote in the early 1960s, in which she remembers Jefferson Levy and visits to Monticello. Most of what she writes jibes with her sister Florence’s remembrances, as well as with all with the other primary-source materials about Jefferson Levy and Monticello during his ownership that I’ve uncovered. But the memoir also contains some observations that I’d not come across before.

Frances Lewis described her uncle as a “very tall and big man,” and said that her family visited “Uncle Jeff” regularly at his lavish New York City townhouse on 34th Street. She said that her Aunt Amelia “kept house for her family,” as well as for her two bachelor brothers, Jefferson M. and Mitchell Abraham Cass Levy.

She went on to give a revealing glimpse into Jefferson Levy’s early twentieth century lifestyle.

“On Sunday mornings,” she wrote, “we would be sent in to see Uncle Jeff, who would be lying on a big four poster bed, surrounded by the Sunday papers and there would be two big greyhounds stretched on the bed beside him.

The memoir confirms, as Fran Lewis put it, that during their childhood she and her sister Agnes “often were brought down to stay a few weeks in Monticello in the summer.” She said that her Aunt Amelia—who liked her nieces to call her “auntie”—presided over a household with a good number of African American “maids who lived in the old slave quarters, which were underground outside the main house.”

Today, those quarters, known as the South Wing, house several exhibits that document the lives of enslaved African Americans at Monticello. The lineup includes the spectacular digital exhibit on the life of Sally Hemings and the Getting Word project, which tells the history of Monticello’s enslaved people primarily through the oral histories of their descendants. There’s also the restored post-1809 Kitchen and Cook’s Room.

Fran Lewis describes her aunt Amelia as “a smart woman and a gracious hostess to many important people who came to visit Uncle Jeff and [who] gave many parties in the beautiful parlor where there was a large malachite table and many fine oil paintings.

“The floor was highly polished and we children were never allowed to enter that room except on one occasion when President Theodore Roosevelt came to visit [on June 17, 1903] and Agnes and I and Monroe were sent in to shake hands with him.”

Jefferson Levy, she said, “slept in Thomas Jefferson’s room,” known today as the Bed Chamber, which famously features Jefferson’s alcove bed. It’s conceivable that Jefferson M. Levy slept in the alcove bed.

On the other hand, a visitor to Monticello in 1900 wrote that Jefferson Levy installed “a gold Louis XV bed” on a “dais” in the Bed Chamber, upholstered in “damask, while voluminous blue damask curtains draped to each side fell from a gold coronet that hung from the ceiling.”

Fran Lewis said that her uncle had “many” greyhounds, including his favorite, Duke, who “always slept in Uncle Jeff’s room.”

Fran (who was known as Fanny as a child) described some of the farming operations at Monticello, including a “field with about 50 Shetland ponies and one Palomino, which belonged to Monroe, who would ride him around the back lawn.”

Frances Lewis at Monticello, 1959

Thomas Rhodes, Jefferson Levy’s overseer at Monticello, also ran a diary operation on the mountain. “There were cows,” Fran Lewis said, “and in the evenings we would go down the hill to watch them be milked, and even tried to do it ourselves.”

The children also occasionally played in the Jefferson family cemetery. “We would go down the hill and squeeze between the bars,” Fran Lewis wrote, “and play inside. Back at the house, the children “would chalk out a hop scotch” on the roof of the former slave quarters. When it rained, they scampered up one of the narrow staircases in the house to the top floor, and explored the Dome Room “where all sorts of things were stored, including a two wheeled gig that Thomas Jefferson rode in when he went to sign the Declaration of Independence.”

L. Napoleon Levy (wearing the dark hat) and his daughters Agnes, Alma (on the pony), Fanny, and Florence, with their cousin Monroe Mayhoff (holding the pony). The man on the right, is Willis Henderson, who worked for Jefferson Levy at Monticello. Photo courtesy of the Lewis family.

Jefferson, indeed, did drive that one-horse gig, which was built by enslaved people at Monticello, on two six-day journeys from the mountain to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775 and 1776. As I noted in Saving Monticello, the gig remained unused and unchanged after it was stowed away upstairs at Monticello following Jefferson’s death, although its wheels and shaft had disappeared by the time Jefferson Levy had taken over.

The house and grounds “were truly beautiful,” Fran Lewis wrote, “as Jefferson Levy spent large sums of money restoring the house and buying furnishings.”

That sentence is 100 percent accurate, and jibes with every other first-person account of Monticello during Jefferson Levy’s ownership.

EVENTS: My scheduled live events for the spring and summer have been canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. To check out my scheduled late 2020 events, go to the Events page on my website at http://bit.ly/Eventsandtalks

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello, or for any of my other books, feel free to send me email at marcleepson@gmail.com  For info on my latest book, Ballad of the Green Beret, go to http://bit.ly/GreenBeretBook

GIFT IDEAS:  Want a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello? Please e-mail me.  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of brand-new copies of my other books.