October 2021

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XVIII, Number 10             October 1, 2021

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

 

 ‘ALL IS IN DILAPIDATION AND RUIN’: The cover image of Saving Monticello contains the oldest known photograph of Thomas Jefferson’s “Essay in Architecture.” Taken in the early 1870s, it paints a stark picture of a seriously neglected house in serious disrepair. As readers of the book know, that was the second time Monticello had come close to ruin. The first happened four decades earlier, not long after the July 4, 1826, death of Thomas Jefferson in the early 1830s after James Turner Barclay bought the place from Jefferson’s heirs, Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son Thomas Jefferson Randolph. 

“The first thing that strikes you is the utter ruin and desolation of everything,” John H. B. Latrobe, a prominent Baltimore lawyer, philanthropist, and a founder of the Maryland Historical Society (and the son of the famed architect Benjamin Latrobe), wrote after visiting Monticello in August 1832. That was just eight months after Barclay, a pharmacist who lived in Charlottesville, purchased the property and moved into the house with his wife Julia. (The Barclays in photo below with daughter Sarah in 1856)

Another visitor to the mountaintop that month, William T. Barry, then the Postmaster General of the United States, painted a similarly bleak picture of Monticello. “All is dilapidation and ruin,” Barry said in a letter to his daughter, “and I fear the present owner, Dr. Barclay, is not able, if he were inclined, to restore it to its former condition.” 

Martha Randolph, writing to her daughter Ellen in October 1833, offered more first-person evidence about Monticello’s declining condition during the Barclay years. Mr. Barclay had “cut down the grove”—Jefferson’s 18-acre "ornamental forest" near the house—and “ploughed up the yard to the very edge of the lawn and planted it in corn,” she wrote, and the house’s terrace was “a complete wreck.”

I reported that primary-source evidence, among other things, in Saving Monticello, to make the case that James Turner Barclay had done little or nothing during the four years he lived at Monticello to reverse the physical decline that had begun in Thomas Jefferson’s later years—and that, in fact, that Barclay had made things worse. 

I also cited a campaign beginning in the early 1880s by Barclay descendants to rehabilitate his Monticello reputation with a series of newspaper and magazine articles promoting the idea that he was a devoted steward of Monticello. 

I quoted from a few of those articles in the book, and recently came across one I hadn’t seen in the August 10, 1882, Valley Virginian newspaper of Staunton, Virginia. 

That article reprinted a letter to the editor that appeared in the New York Sun from John Judson Barclay, a son of James Barclay who was born at Monticello in 1834, and who staunchly defended his father’s time there—using, he said, his “personal knowledge.” 

The younger Barclay (in photo, below) wrote that his father—far from letting the place go into ruin—actually “made extensive repairs to the terraces and beautified the grounds, as well as the interior of the mansion….” During his father’s three years at Monticello, his son said, he dispensed “a liberal hospitality, extending a warm Virginia welcome to all visitors.”

Similar thoughts were in an August 10, 1908, article in The Wheeling [West Virginia] Intelligencer, on the occasion of the death of Julia Barclay. That includes the statement that James T. Barclay “took great pride in restoring the serpentine walks, terraces and in planting new trees in the yard, and Mrs. Barclay was a model housekeeper." The article went on to say that it "was often said by ‘Jeff’ Randolph, who was a frequent visitor to Monticello during their stay in his grandfather’s old home, that Mrs. Barclay kept the floors in a far more beautiful condition than they were kept during the lifetime of his grandfather.”  

John Judson Barclay’s wife Decima also took part in the Barclay rehabilitation campaign. “Dr. Barclay never cut down a tree at Monticello that Mr. Jefferson had planted, or that was rare, or of any value whatever,” she wrote around 1900. “He himself planted many trees on the ‘little mountain’ which he loved, as he had always loved and admired the memory of its former owner; and it was his greatest pleasure to embellish and beautify the grounds….” 

A longer version of that scenario is contained in a privately published 1939 book, Sketches of The Moon and Barclay Families, by Barclay descendant Anna Mary Moon. Before “the Barclays took possession,” she wrote, Monticello “fell into neglect.” She went on to say that James T. Barclay “kept gardeners constantly employed renewing the serpentine walks and improving the premises in every way in his power.” He even “built new terraces to the house, which he found in a very dilapidated condition.” 

Historians know that the least reliable form of historical evidence is the family story, and these Barclay Family remembrances certainly fall into that category. Plus, they were written decades after the fact, and seemingly in an effort to refute point by point what the visitors to Monticello and Martha Randolph wrote in 1832 and 1833. Which leads me to think that the family doth protest too much. 

So, did the Barclays wreck Monticello? Or did they take great care of it? It seems likely that the answer lies somewhere between those extremes. But the facts remains that when Barclay sold the place to Uriah Levy in 1834 (the sale didn’t go through till 1836), it was certainly in dilapidation and ruin, and  the Barclay family left there after only four years, sometime in 1835. 

Soon thereafter, James Turner Barclay began a new life as a missionary in the Holy Land. But that's another story.

EVENTS: None schedule October, though it looks like I’ll be getting back to doing in-person talks on Saving Monticello and my other books in November. Details to follow. If other events get scheduled, they’ll be listed, along with all future talks, on the Author Events page on my website, https://marcleepson.com 

GIFT IDEA:  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 new copies of my other books.

The SM Newsletter on Line: You can read back issues of this newsletter at http://bit.ly/SMNewsLtr