October 2020

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XVII, Number 10                                                     October 1, 2020

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

 

FROM THE LIBRARY: I’ve been to Monticello many times since 1996 when I first started working on the book that would become Saving Monticello. From that day to the present, it’s always a special feeling driving up the mountain from Charlottesville—especially in the fall and spring—and then entering the wooded grounds and making your way up to the house. 

I spent countless hours doing research at Monticello before the book came out, and did my first talk in the old Visitor Center in December 2001 soon after the book was published.   

Since then, I’ve done about twenty book signings in the Gift Shop and several other talks at Monticello, including one in the theater for the house guides and one in a large tent outside at the annual reception for Monticello’s contributors. 

Monticello’s fantastic presidential-style Jefferson Library—now closed to the public because of the pandemic—is a short drive from the house. I did a talk there in October (the best time of year to visit) 2012 on the Marquis de Lafayette, a great friend of Thomas Jefferson. 

My second visit to Monticello’s Jefferson Library came on September 23. I was honored to be asked to do a livestream Q&A about the Levys with my friend and colleague Susan Stein, Monticello’s long-time curator who has helped me with the book since I met her on my first research trip to Charlottesville twenty-three years ago. The good folks at Monticello streamed the 45-minute session live on their website, as well as on their Facebook page and YouTube channel. 

In case you missed it, the highest-quality version is on Monticello’s website at:  http://bit.ly/MontLiveStream

                                          The livestream from behind the camera

MONTICELLO’s RESIDENTS: A Charlottesville researcher, Sam Towler, has spent many years digging out primary-source material on the people who lived at Monticello for most of the second half of the 19^th century. A few years ago Mr. Towler kindly sent me a 13-page manuscript in which he gives details about what he uncovered in local court, real estate, and other documents on virtually every person, including enslaved people, who lived at Monticello from 1853-83. That material recently has been digitized and is available to read online on the Center for Jewish History’s website. Here’s the URL: http://bit.ly/MontResidents 

Not coincidentally, the Center for Jewish History’s archives in New York City house materials on Uriah Levy and Jefferson Levy, both of whom lived in Manhattan. I spent the better part of two days in the archives when I did the research for Saving Monticello in 2000. It was there that I found that Jefferson Levy used a clipping service—a company he paid to physically clip out newspaper articles mentioning his name—and that someone had mounted the clippings in several bulging scrapbooks. There was no user guide, so I went to through every page looking primarily for material on his ownership of Monticello. 

New York City had probably a dozen newspapers and Jefferson Levy was a prominent political and business figure in the city. Suffice it to say there were many, many articles. Reading through them gave me a good picture of the man and his public lifestyle—and of his work repairing, restoring, and preserving Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

 

THE ORIGINAL TOMBSTONE:  The six-foot-tall obelisk tombstone that sits above Thomas Jefferson’s grave at Monticello today (below, left) is not the original one the family put up in 1833, six years after his death. That’s because almost immediately after it was erected, visitors to the graveyard helped themselves to souvenir pieces of the tombstone—something known as “chipping,” which was not uncommon in the 19^th century.  

The original’s much-smaller headstone was damaged so extensively that by 1841 Uriah Levy had it taken from the graveyard and mounted it on a wall in the Entrance Hall of Monticello for safekeeping. Later, Jefferson’s grandson and the co-executor of his estate, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, took the tombstone to his Edgehill Plantation nearby. The current granite tombstone at Monticello was purchased with funds Congress appropriated for a new monument in 1882 and put in place in the family-owned graveyard in 1883.

Jefferson’s descendants donated the original tombstone to the University of Missouri in 1885. Exactly why they chose the university is not known, although it could be tied to the fact that MU was the first university founded in the territory acquired by Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.

The original tombstone (below, right) was in the news last month when the University of Missouri added a clear acrylic cast to it to prevent being damaged by 21^st century vandals. “This is Jefferson’s original tombstone, and it was entrusted to the university,” a university spokesperson said on September 20. “We have a responsibility to ensure it is preserved appropriately.”

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You can read more details on the tombstone in a 2013 Smithsonian magazine article at https://bit.ly/SmithsonianTomb

 EVENTS: My scheduled live events for the spring, summer, and fall were all canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. I have no scheduled events for October. 

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.