December 2022

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XIX, Number 12                                                       December 2022

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

THE JONAS PHILLIPS VENDUE STORE: Jonas Phillips, Uriah Levy’s beloved maternal grandfather, was a remarkable man. He was born Jonah Phaibush in 1735 in Busek, a village in Prussia. He made his way to London in his early twenties, and at 21 arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, to seek his fortune after an arduous trans-Atlantic journey aboard the ship Charming Nancy. 

One of the first things the young man did after arriving in the colonies was Anglicize his name to Jonas Phillips. As I wrote in Saving Monticello, a few years later he moved to Albany, New York, where he became a Free Mason and opened a store selling food and spirits. 

Jonas Phillips left Albany in 1761. He married into the Nunez family on November 10, 1762, when he and 16-year-old Rebecca Nunez Machado—the daughter of Maria Caetana (Zipporah) Nunez and the Rev. David Mendes Machado—took their vows at Hickory Town just outside of Philadelphia. 

The couple immediately began raising a family. They had 21 children, although several died as infants. The offspring included Uriah Levy’s mother Rachel, who was born on May 23, 1769. The couple moved from Albany to New York City, where Jonas once again owned and operated a retail store. He also was an auctioneer and served the Jewish community as a shohet (ritual slaughterer) and bodek (meat examiner). Around 1774 he moved his growing family to Philadelphia where he opened a vendue store at the upper end of Third Street. Jonas Phillips’ Vendue Store hosted auctions for estates, land, and market goods, and also sold sundries. 

The store owner and family man (above) was swept up in the revolutionary fervor in New York and Philadelphia in the 1770s. He spoke out publicly on British abuses of colonists’ rights and signed a letter that was published in the January 23, 1770, New York Gazette supporting the strongly anti-British Non Importation Resolutions of 1765. He also participated in running the British blockade of Philadelphia. On October 31, 1778, at age 43, Jonas Phillips joined a Philadelphia militia unit, Capt. John Linton’s Company of Col. William Bradford’s Battalion, as a private. 

Jonas Phillips also was an outspoken proponent of freedom of religion. He famously wrote a September 7, 1787, letter on that subject to the Constitutional Convention, which had been meeting since May of that year in Philadelphia to draft a document—which would become the U.S. Constitution—that addressed problems with the weak central government created by the Articles of Confederation. 

Identifying himself in the letter as “one of the people called Jews of the City of Philadelphia,” Jonas Phillips called on the Convention to insert provisions in the forthcoming Constitution to provide all men “the natural and unalienable Right to worship almighty God according to their own Conscience and understanding.”

*************

Jonas Phillips was instrumental in raising funds to purchase a new building for the Mikveh Israel synagogue in Philadelphia in 1782. He later was elected the president of that Spanish and Portuguese Congregation, which had been established in 1740. As the head of the congregation, he invited George Washington to attend the dedication ceremonies of its new building. 

Jonas Phillips died in Philadelphia in 1803. Rebecca Phillips outlived him by 28 years. Their daughter Rachel had married Michael Levy in Philadelphia in June 1787 when she was 18 years old. Uriah came along in 1792. Family lore has it that the boy idolized his patriotic grandfather. Uriah, the story goes, influenced by his grandfather, had two idols growing up, George Washington and John Paul Jones. 

Which might explain why Uriah ran away from home at ten to be a cabin boy on a ship, was part owner of a merchant ship when he was 19, and the following year, 1812, joined the U.S. Navy to fight the British in the war that began that year. In 1834, Uriah purchased Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, in part because of his admiration for Jefferson’s strong advocacy of religious freedom. 

The grandson did not fall far from his grandfather’s tree, inheriting—and acting upon—his love of country and devotion to freedom of religion. 

As for the 1776 advertisement above, I am indebted to Nancy Hoffman, a Phillips family descendant, who kindly sent me the image. It’s “the oldest piece of my family’s history that I own,” she said in an email. “I do have a few jewelry objects too, but nothing beats this!” 

THE DOC: Steven Pressman’s great documentary, The Levys of Monticello, continues to appear at film festivals. Last month the film received the Audience Award for Best Feature documentary at the 42^nd Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival. 

It continues to get great reviews, including this one by Julia Klein published November 30 in The Forward: https://tinyurl.com/43nv3cyw    

In it, she notes that the doc “draws the essentials of this distinctively American story” from Saving Monticello, and opines that Susan Stein, Niya Bates, and I offer “pithy commentary” in the movie. I don’t disagree. 

For more on the film, go to https://tinyurl.com/43nv3cyw  

EVENTS: On Thursday Evening, November 3, I took part in one of the most memorable events I’ve had since the publication of Saving Monticello in November 2001: a reception, a screening of The Levys of Monticello, and a Q&A at the Monticello Visitor Center for the trustees of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and guests.

It was a crisp fall evening as we mixed and mingled in the Visitor Center courtyard and feasted on a buffet prepared by the Monticello Farm Table café.

Then came the screening—complete with popcorn (and wine)—following a gracious introduction by Leslie Greene Bowman, the Foundation’s president.

Afterward, we had an engaging Q&A moderated by Susan Stein, Monticello’s long-time curator. I joined U-Va. History Professor Emerita Phyllis Leffler and Niya Bates, the former head of Monticello’s pioneering Getting Word African American Oral History Project (flanking me the photo)—both of whom are featured in the documentary, along with Steve Pressman.

On, Sunday, November 5, we took in a Virginia Film Festival screening of the doc at the beautifully restored Paramount Theater on the Charlottesville downtown mall, which drew some 850 people. Wjke followed that with another Q&A. It was a memorable weekend.

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello or for any of my other books, please email me at marcleepson@gmail.com For details on upcoming events, check the Events page on my website:  https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

November 2022

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XIX, Number 11                                                   November 2022

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

THE MISTRESS OF MONTICELLO: “The greetings of South Carolina to the Master of Monticello—Floride Cunningham.” 

Those words are inscribed to Jefferson Monroe Levy in a copy of the second edition of Miss Washington of Virginia: A Semi-Centennial Love Story, a privately published novel by Jeannie Blackburn, writing as “Mrs. F. Berger Moran.” Originally published in 1889, this edition of the short, melodramatic fictional account of the courtship of young Marie Washington, a grandniece of George Washington, came out in 1893. 

Levy descendant Richard Lewis recently came across the volume among his late mother Harley Lewis’ books, and kindly sent images of the inscription. Miss Washington is a 19^th century romance novel with a plot and ending that will surprise no one. Plus, it’s filled with cringe-worthy racist tropes whenever an enslaved person is mentioned. 

That said, there is historical value in the book: the short but illuminating sketch of Jefferson Levy’s mother, Francis Mitchell (Fanny) Levy, which mentions, her role at Monticello during the first 13 years that her son owned the property. Jefferson Levy paid for the second printing; and Jeannie Blackburn wrote a short “In Memorium” about his mother, who had died in 1892 and was a fan of the book. 

While researching Saving Monticello twenty-plus-years ago, I found a small amount of material that that shed light on the time Fanny Levy’s spent at Monticello, primarily letters that she wrote in 1881 to her sons Louis and Jefferson Levy and her son-in-law Marcus Ryttenburg in New York. They contained first-person accounts of the work Jefferson Levy did to repair, preserve, and restore the place after he bought out the other heirs of Uriah Levy in 1879, following a seventeen-year period in which the house and grounds had been all but neglected since his uncle’s death in 1862. 

Portrait of Fanny Levy

Monticello, Fanny Levy wrote on July 4 1881, to her son Louis, “is looking elegant,” the “grounds and scenery [are] magnificent.” Fanny Levy said, enjoyed a staff of “splendid servants,” including "a good cook and waitress."

I also found references to one of the first large events held at Monticello, a fund-raising Colonial Ball Jefferson Levy put on to benefit the Albemarle County chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A local newspaper reported that Fanny Levy “came down from New York to be [her bachelor son’s] hostess,” wearing “a colonial outfit of lavender in which she had her portrait painted later." The newspaper called the fundraising event “one of the most brilliant entertainments ever given in Albemarle County.” 

What Jeannie Blackburn wrote in Miss Washington’s “In Memorium” adds to the picture of Fanny Levy’s time at Monticello. She “was widely known as the charming hostess of Monticello,” Blackburn wrote, “and will always be remembered as a lovely woman, cordial in her manner, giving genuine kind welcome to Monticello, taking great pleasure in showing the beauties of the old home to all her guests, and taking great care to have Monticello kept in the colonial style of the days of Jefferson.”

Fanny Levy “entertained many visitors at this grand old homestead, among them many prominent personages.” In 1889, Blackburn noted, “President Cleveland and some of his cabinet were guests.” Virginia, she said, “has lost a good friend in Fanny Mitchell Levy, Monticello a cherished mistress, and her children a mother who can never be replaced.” 

As far as the inscription to Jefferson Levy is concerned, the woman who wrote it, Floride Cunningham of South Carolina, was the niece of Ann Pamela Cunningham, who founded the Ladies Association of Mount Vernon in 1856, which purchased George Washington's home—and owns and operates it to this day—from Washington’s nephew, who was about to sell the property to become residential housing lots. 

Anne Pamela Cunningham often is cited as the first American house preservationist—but I’ve long contended that that honor should go to Uriah Levy, who did what she did at Monticello twenty years earlier, in 1835.

JEFFERSON’S JEWISH GRANDCHILDREN: Yes, you read that correctly. I recently learned the details in a revealing November 2020 essay, “The Jewish Grandchildren of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson,” by University of Virginia History Professor James Loeffler, who directs the university’s Jewish Studies Program. 

The story begins early in the early 19^th century with the common law marriage of David Isaacs and Nancy West. Isaacs was a Jewish man who had emigrated from Germany and ran Charlottesville’s general store. West was a “free mixed-race woman,” Professor Loeffler writes, who “owned local property, ran a bakery, and launched one of the country’s first African-American newspapers.” 

In 1822, the couple—who were raising seven children—were hauled into court and indicted for the crime of “interracial miscegenation.” After fighting the charges for five years, the couple prevailed.

In 1832, one of their daughters, Julia Ann Isaacs, married Eston Hemings. He was the youngest son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race (her mother was biracial and her father was John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law) enslaved woman at Monticello.

DNA and historical evidence strongly suggest that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings and his six siblings. Eston Hemings, who was born in 1808, had been freed by Thomas Jefferson in his will following his death on July 4, 1826.

Eston and Julia Ann Hemings’ first child, John Wayles Hemings, was born in Charlottesville in 1835. He later served as a Union officer in the Civil War. The couple had two other children, including Beverly Frederick Hemings (in the photo with his sons), who was born in Ohio in 1839 after the family moved west.

They later moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where they changed their last name to Jefferson. And, although Julia Ann’s father was Jewish, the entire family “began to identify publicly as [Thomas] Jefferson’s white, Christian descendants.”

You can read the entire essay at https://tinyurl.com/TJGrandchildren 

Special thanks to my friend and Saving Monticello Newsletter subscriber Amoret Bruguiere for bringing Professor Loeffler’s essay to my attention. 

THE DOC: Steven Pressman’s great documentary, The Levys of Monticello, continues to appear at film festivals. There’s an in-person screening on Sunday, November 6, at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, after which I’ll be taking part in a Q&A with Steve, Susan Stein, Phyllis Leffler, and Niya Bates.

 The next screening is set for November 13 at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival in partnership with Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History.

For more info, go to https://bit.ly/LevyDoc  

EVENTS: On Saturday afternoon, November 5, I will sign copies of Saving Monticello at the Monticello Gift Shop on the Mountaintop—the day before the Sunday, November 6 screening at the beautifully restored Paramount Theater on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville.

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello or for any of my other books, email me at marcleepson@gmail.com For details on other upcoming events, check the Events page on my website: https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

October 2022

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XIX, Number 10                                                      October 2022

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

 

AN IDEAL PLACE TO PLAY: It’s not every day that you get to read a first-person account of a visit to Monticello in 1940, much less one written by a Levy Family descendant. But I was fortunate enough last month to receive a copy of “Spring at Monticello,” a scrapbook entry written by Nancy Hoffman, a granddaughter of L. Napoleon Levy—and a grandniece of his brother, Jefferson M. Levy who owned Monticello from 1879 to 1923. 

In her short account, Nancy Hoffman describes a visit to the mountaintop she made that year when she was ten years old with her sister Pam, their mother Alma Hendricks Levy Bookman, and three family friends—a mother and her two daughters. Many thanks to Nancy’s son Rob Hoffman for kindly scanning and emailing it to me.

The mothers and daughters piled into the Bookman family station wagon in New York and drove south to their first stop in Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg. Touring the restored 18^th century buildings, Nancy Hoffman wrote, was “a ten-year-old’s dream come true.” 

A highlight for the New Yorkers was a meal featuring Southern fried chicken and Virginia ham biscuits; another was running into Katherine Hepburn in one of the historic houses. “For us kids, it was a first,” she wrote, “and a huge treat to have been so close to living, breathing, big movie star.” 

The next stop was Monticello. When Nancy’s mother drove up to the old gatehouse that was used to greet visitors in those days, an older African American man “came out to see who we were,” Nancy remembered. “When he saw my mother behind the wheel, his face lit up and he cried out incredulously, his voice rising as he spoke, ‘Alma??? Alma???’” 

The man “recognized my mother from long ago [visits],” Nancy wrote, as he had worked at Monticello for Jefferson Levy. “But the astonishing part was that he had not seen my mother since she was a young girl. Here she was all grown up, behind the wheel of an automobile, yet he knew her immediately, and with obvious affection, called out her name.” 

Her mother, Nancy said, “called his name with some surprise, nodded her head and affirmed that she was indeed Alma. Mother offered him a ride up to the house.” The “fragile, white-haired” man seemed reticent at first, then said he would have to get permission to join them. So, Nancy said, “He got on the phone and received the okay to accompany us.”

The man—whose name Nancy could not recall when she wrote the remembrance—likely was William Page, the husband of Lucy Coleman Barnaby Page, who had been the gatekeeper at Monticello since 1932. William Page was one of the first tour guides at Monticello in 1923 when the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased the place from Jefferson Levy.

The family drove up from the gatehouse to Monticello and had a private tour of the house. As the man and her mother reminisced,” Nancy wrote, “he took us up to the third floor, the closed-off rotunda where my mother, her siblings and cousins used to stay when they spent the summer there with their Uncle Jeff.”

Monticello, she remembered, “appeared like a vast open indoor space, flooded with light and an ideal place to play. I could picture us dressing up and putting on plays. My mother seemed like the luckiest little girl in the world to have spent summers there with her family.” 

It “was a glorious visit and one of the best vacations I ever spent, wallowing in America’s past, enjoying Virginia’s culinary expertise and being treated so royally at my young age in such a magnificent mansion that my mother, for several summers, had called home.” 

THE DOC: Steven Pressman’s great doc, The Levys of Monticello, is being screened at several film festivals this fall. On October 10, it’ll be shown at the Jacob Burns Film Center as part of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival. There’s an in-person screening on Sunday, November 6, at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, after which I’ll be taking part in a Q&A with Steve, Susan Stein, and Niya Bates. The next screening is set for November 13 at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival in partnership with Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History.

For more info, go to https://bit.ly/LevyDoc  

EVENTS: I’ll be doing three book talks in October. On Sunday, October 2, I have a Zoom talk on Saving Monticello for the Shearith Israel Sisterhood book club in Dallas.

I’ll be speaking about my book What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life, on Thursday, October 6, at the luncheon meeting of the Alexandria (Va.) Committee of Colonial Dames.

And I’ll be doing a talk on Flag: An American Biography on Tuesday, October 11, for the Kate Waller Barret DAR Chapter in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello or for any of my other books, email me at marcleepson@gmail.com For details on other upcoming events, check the Events page on my website:  https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

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

September 2022

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XIX, Number 9                                                                      September 2022

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

THE REAL SAMUEL NUNES STORY: In Saving Monticello I told the fascinating story of one of Uriah Levy’s great-great-grandfathers, Samuel Nunes Ribiero, whom I described as “a prominent, well-to-do Portuguese physician,” and went on to say that he and his family were crypto-Jews, sometimes called conversos or marranos (which can be translated as “swine” or “pig”) and by one account made a thriller-worthy escape from the Spanish Inquisition. 

Said escape involved a miraculous reprieve from the Grand Inquisitor; a stealth Passover Seder; and a British sea captain masterminding a daring plan for him, his mother, his wife, and their two sons and a daughter under the noses of their Inquisitorial overseers to London in 1726. 

The Nunes family openly practiced Judaism in England. In 1733 they were among 40 Jews who immigrated to the colony of Georgia, where they changed the family name to Nunez, as indicated in the document, Early Settlers of Georgia (1783) below. 

Last month I saw a post on the Nunez Family Descendant’s Facebook page by the historian Alex Bueno-Edwards in which he wrote about the Dr. Samuel Nunes page he had created on Geneanet, a widely used European genealogical database. In preparing the page, he relied heavily on research done by Arlindo Correia, a retired Portuguese tax official who has dug deeply into official Portuguese Inquisition records. In 2012 Arlindo Correia uncovered a vast amount of material about the Nunes family’s Inquisition horrors—one that made no mention of the oft-repeated family story of their dramatic 1726 escape from Lisbon.

“The true story,” Alex Bueno-Edwards—who translated the page into English—wrote, “is less dramatic than the fantastically embellished version found all over the Internet, but much more compelling.”  

What follows are facts that I found particularly compelling about the Samuel Nunes family and the Inquisition from Correia’s research—facts that I didn’t know when I was doing the research for Saving Monticello. That includes information about Dr. Nunes and his wife Gracia’s—and Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s—Portuguese ancestors. 

First, a bit of genealogy: 

·       Samuel Nunes’ father, Manuel Henriques de Lucena, was born about 1641 in São Vicente da Beira, about a 150 miles northeast of Lisbon. A customs officer, he moved to Lisbon in 1703.

·      Sometime around 1668 Manuel had married Samuel Nunes’ mother, Maria Nunes Ribeiro, who was born circa 1653, most likely in Idanha-a-Nova not far from São Vicente da Beira, close to the border with Spain.

·        Samuel Nunes’ paternal grandparents were Diogo Gomes Henriques and Isabel Henriques.

·        His maternal grandparents were Luis Lopes and Maria Riberio.

·        Samuel Nunes married Gracia Caetana da Veiga, born in 1676 in Lisbon.

·       Gracia (later known as Rebecca) was the daughter of André de Sequeira, who was born about 1646 in Lisbon, a merchant and businessman.

·         Gracia’s mother was Maria Isabel da Veiga, born in Lisbon sometime before 1676. 

The Inquisition records show that Dr. Samuel Nunes was Jewish, but was baptized a Roman Catholic to hide that fact. He had established himself in Lisbon by the turn of the 18^th century, a particularly violent time of the Inquisition. After being denounced by about a dozen people, Dr. Nunes and his wife Gracia were arrested on August 23, 1703, along with his father Manuel. They were locked up in the prison at the Estaus Palace, the Portuguese Inquisition headquarters. 

As for the testimony of their accusers, Arlindo Correia wrote: “As usual, the content of the complaints is repeated, with… variations and additions, following the established formulas: between [Catholic] practices, they declared themselves to be [observers] of the law of Moses for the salvation of their souls.” 

Dr. Nunes testified that his wife was “a New Christian,” and that he was baptized, confirmed, learned catechism, and attended “the sacraments and Sunday Mass.” An Inquisitor challenged him, urging him to confess his guilt. He replied that he always “acted like a good Catholic,” and that he “never had any practice of Judaism or Jewish ceremony.” 

The trial dragged on into the next year. On July 24, 1704, Dr. Nunes decided to “confess” in order to avoid being executed. In a long statement, he denounced “his father, his friends and acquaintances, coinciding greatly with the names of those who had denounced him.” 

The Inquisitors accepted his confession on August 18, but because he didn’t denounce his wife—and perhaps because some of them were his patients—they spared his life. However, Dr. Nunes was tortured, according to the Inquisition records, for the crime of “not having mentioned his participation in any Jewish ceremony.” He underwent what Correia called “a Hurried treatment.” which “was longer and therefore more painful than the expert treatment.”

No need to go into the gruesome types of torture the Inquisitors subjected Jews and Muslims to. However, the records show that “strings”—most likely ropes—were involved and that the torture was so painful that Dr. Nunes made more confessions, even though he was unable to sign them. 

When the torture ended, he was tossed back into the Inquisition prison. Meanwhile, “all of his goods” were confiscated. 

Samuel Nunes was not released until May 14, 1706, although his wife Rebecca remained in prison because she refused to confess or give testimony against other family members. She was then tortured more severely than her husband was and eventually denounced several of her relatives. She was released on September 12, 1706. Twenty years later Dr. and Mrs. Nunes and their six children followed the path of other crypto-Jews in Portugal and escaped Lisbon and headed to London. 

Next month we’ll pick up the story of what happened to the family in England, leading to their second adventure, the trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Georgia in 1733. 

ELI EVANS, 1936-2022: Eli Evans, best known for his pioneering, best-selling book, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, died July 26 in New York City of complications from COVID-19. He was 85. Published in 1971, The Provincials is widely regarded as the seminal history of Jews in the American South. 

The book “explores the nuances of Southern Jewish identity,” New York Jewish Week said, “and belongs on bookshelves next to Irving Howe’s classic World of Our Fathers,” the famed 1976 history of Eastern European Jews who emigrated to the United States in the late 1890s and early 1900. 

Eli Evans was born and grew up in North Carolina where his paternal grandfather had settled after fleeing Lithuania in the late 1800s. His father, Emmanuel “Mutt” Evans, was born in Fayetteville, owned a chain of general stores, and was the first Jewish mayor of Durham. His grandmother, Jennie Nachamson, founded the first Hadassah chapter in the South. 

Eli Evans graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1958, where he became the first Jewish student body president and spent a summer on a Kibbutz in Israel. He then served for two years in the U.S. Navy, after which he went to Yale Law School, getting his law degree in 1963.

He moved to Washington, and worked as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, then for North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford before relocating to New York City. He was working for the Carnegie Corporation when he wrote The Provincials. Evans went on to become the president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, and later a founder of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina. 

“I am one of those people who, when they read The Provincials, they felt for the first time a recognition,” Marcie Cohen Ferris, a UNC professor of American Studies who grew up in Arkansas, told The New York Times. “They had never seen their experience of Jewish life reflected this way.” 

THE DOC: Steven Pressman’s great doc, The Levys of Monticello, is being screened at a bunch of film festivals this fall. It’ll be shown in September in five cities, either virtually or in-person:  Cleveland, Chattanooga, Milwaukee, Dallas, and Charleston, S.C. 

On October 10, it’ll be at the Jacob Burns Film Center as part of the Westchester Jewish Film Festival. There’s an in-person screen on Sunday, November 6, at the Virginia Film Festival  in Charlottesville, after which I’ll be taking part in a Q&A with Steve and others in the film. The next screening is set for November 13 at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival in partnership with Philadelphia’s National Museum of American Jewish History.

For more info, go to https://bit.ly/LevyDoc 

EVENTS: I’ll be taking part in a Book Fair on Saturday, September 17, at Lansdowne Woods in Leesburg, Virginia. Along with a group of other local authors, I’ll be signing copies of my books, including Saving Monticello, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in the spacious Lansdowne Clubhouse Auditorium. Then I’ll be part of a two-person panel, “How to Get Your Book Published,” at 3:00. The event is free and open to the public. The address is 19375 Magnolia Grove Square, Leesburg, VA 20176.

On Tuesday, September 27, I’ll be doing talk on Saving Monticello and a book signing at the monthly meeting of the George Mason DAR Chapter in Springfield, Virginia.

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello or for any of my other books, email me at marcleepson@gmail.com

For details on other upcoming events, check the Events page on my website https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

August 2022

 Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XIX, Number 8                                                           August 2022

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

 

THE RACHEL PHILLIPS WEDDING:  When Uriah Levy bought Monticello from James Turner Barclay in 1834, he never planned to live there permanently. An active duty U.S. Navy Lieutenant, Levy lived in a well-appointed townhouse in New York City when he wasn’t sailing the seas. One member of the Levy family, his mother Rachel, did take up residence in Monticello in 1837, a year after Uriah Levy took possession of the property. 

Rachel Machado Phillips Levy (below) was born in New York City in 1769, the daughter of Jonas Phillips (1736-1803) and Rebecca Machado Philips (1746-1831). Jonas and Rebecca Phillips, astoundingly, had 21 children. Several died as infants, including Rachel’s twin sister, Sarah. 

Rachel married a young immigrant from Germany, Michael Levy, in Philadelphia in 1787 when she was 18 years old.  A description of their wedding—believed to be the first recorded of a Jewish wedding ceremony in the New World—is contained in a letter written on the day of the wedding, June 27, by the famed Revolutionary War patriot and physician Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) to his wife Julia. 

In it, Dr. Rush—a signer of the Declaration of Independence—provided plenty of details about the wedding that ring true, although he mistakenly wrote that Michael Levy was from Virginia. After that faux pas, Rush went on to describe the ceremony. He told his wife that it began with about twenty minutes of prayer in “the Hebrew language,” after which Michael Levy signed the Ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract. 

Rush described it as “a small piece of parchment… written in Hebrew, which contained a deed of settlement and which the groom [signed] in the presence of four witnesses. In this deed he conveyed a part of his fortune to his bride, by which she was provided for after his death in case she survived him.” 

Next, the Chuppah—the structure under which a Jewish bride and groom take their vows—was put in place. Rush described it as “a beautiful canopy composed of white and red silk in the middle of the floor. It was supported by four young men (by means of four poles), who put on white gloves for the purpose.” 

After the Chuppah was ready, the bride, accompanied by “her mother, sister, and a long train of female relations, came downstairs.” Rachel Phillips’ face, Rush wrote, “was covered with a veil which reached halfways down her body.” 

Describing the bride as “lovely and affecting,” Rush said he “gazed with delight upon her. Innocence, modesty, fear, respect, and devotion appeared all at once in her countenance.” 

The rabbi (Rush called him “the priest”) then led the assembled in prayer in Hebrew, after which the bride and groom sipped from “a glass full” of wine. After that, the rabbi “took a ring and directed the groom to place it upon the finger of his bride in the same manner as is [practiced} in the marriage service of the Church of England.”

Then came more ceremonial wine sipping by the father of the bride, Jonas Phillips, and the bride and groom. After Michael Levy drank his wine, he “took the glass in his hand and threw it upon a large pewter dish which was suddenly placed at his feet. Upon its breaking into a number of small pieces, there was a general shout of joy and a declaration that the ceremony was over. The groom now saluted his bride, and kisses and congratulations became general through the room.” 

Rush (below) stuck around after the ceremony to have a slice of wedding cake and a glass of wine. Then he paid his respects to Rebecca Philips, who had fainted “under the pressure of the heat.” 

He was about to take his leave when Rebecca Phillips put “a large piece of cake” into his pocket to give to his wife. 

Michael Levy and Rachel Phillips Levy had four children in the next five years. (They eventually had fourteen, three girls and eleven boys.). The fourth child, Uriah Phillips Levy, was born in Philadelphia on April 22, 1792.  

Flash forward 45 years to 1837, when the then U.S. Navy Lt. Uriah Levy brought his 68-year-old mother with him to Monticello, where she took up residence in the house. Rachel Phillips Levy lived in Thomas Jefferson’s “Essay in Architecture” for two years until she died on May 1, 1839. Her son was at sea at the time, commanding the U.S.S. Vandalia, a 783-ton sloop of war. He apparently did not learn that his mother had died until six months later when he arrived at Monticello after the Vandalia's cruise ended and the ship put in at Norfolk. 

Back on the mountaintop in early May the manager of Monticello, Joel Wheeler, had contacted Uriah’s siblings, Jonas and Amelia, and they arranged to have their mother buried near the house. The tombstone (below) Levy later erected included the Hebrew month and year of his mother’s death. It was inscribed: 

“To the memory of Rachel Phillips Levy, Born in New York, 23 of May 1769, Married 1787. Died 7, of IYAR, (May) 5591, AB (1839) at Monticello, Va.”   

She is the only Levy family member buried at Monticello. 

THE DOC: By mid-summer, Steven Pressman reports, his terrific documentary The Levys of Monticello had been shown “at nearly 20 festivals around the country and in Canada, with more than a dozen others on the schedule for later this summer and fall—and many more to come beyond that.” 

In answer to an oft-asked question about when the film will be available online, he said: “That will happen at some point in the future, but for now the film will continue to be shown on the festival circuit throughout the rest of the year and into 2023. So for those who haven’t yet had a chance to see the film, hopefully it’ll be coming your way soon.” You can find more info about this award-winning documentary, including the trailer, at https://bit.ly/LevyDoc 

EVENTS: I’ll be doing two Zoom talks for Context Conversations this month. The first, on Saving Monticello, complete with scores of historical images, takes place on Monday, August 15, beginning at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time.

The second is on the July 9, 1864, Civil War Battle of Monocacy and Confederate Gen. Jubal Early’s subsequent attack on Washington, D.C., based on my book Desperate Engagement. It’s on Monday, August 22, also at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. For info and tickets, go to https://bit.ly/MonticelloContext or https://bit.ly/ContextDesperate

If you’d like to arrange an event for Saving Monticello or for any of my other books, email me at marcleepson@gmail.com

For details on other upcoming events, check the Events page on my website:  https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.

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