Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XXI, Number 1 January 2024
“The study of the past is a constantly evolving,
never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner
I included a brief sketch of the life of Dr. Samuel Nunez as he came to be known in the United States (and is referred to in eighteenth century documents as Diogo Nunes Riberio, Samuel Riberio Nunez, Samuel Nunis, and Samuel Nunez Riberio) in Saving Monticello, along with the colorful, handed-down story about how he and his Sephardic Jewish family escaped the Portuguese Inquisition.
In recent years I’ve learned more details about what Dr. Nunez and his family went through during the hellish Inquisition and the details of their escape, including what I reported on in the September 2022 newsletter based on recent genealogical research by Alex Bueno-Edwards.
Alex had just created a detailed, well-documented Dr. Samuel Nunes page on Geneanet, a European genealogical database. In preparing the page, Alex relied heavily on research done by Arlindo Correia during a deep dive into the official Portuguese Inquisition records. In 2012, Arlindo Correia uncovered a vast amount of material about the Nunes family’s Inquisition horrors, including new information about their daring, life-saving 1726 escape from Lisbon.
Tom Loftis uncovered more details about the Nunez family saga with the help of a graduate student at Lisbon University and Rita Mayer Jardim, a Lisbon attorney who specializes in helping descendants of Sephardic Iberian Jews attain Portuguese citizenship—as well as Portuguese Jews in America: Escape from the Inquisition, a Portuguese book (see cover above) by historian Carla Vieira, who specializes in Portuguese Sephardic history.
For “many generations, the Nunez family kept up its Jewish faith and practices in secret,” Tom wrote, “and some family members met a violent death at the hands of the inquisition.” That included Clara Nunez, who was burned to death in Seville, Spain, in 1632, and Isabel and Helen Nunez, who also were executed that year.
Dr. Nunez was born, as I noted in Saving Monticello, in Idanha-a-Nova, near Portugal’s eastern border with Spain. What I didn’t know was that he received his medical training in Plasencia and Salamanca in Spain and at the Portuguese University of Coimbra, and began practicing in Lisbon around 1698.
The family practiced Judaism in secret as Dr. Nunez became a prominent physician in the Portuguese capital providing medical care to King Peter II (also known as Dom Pedro II), who reigned from 1648-1706, and even the Portuguese Grand Inquisitor, along with other prominent Dominican religious figures and Lisbon secular leaders.
Tom confirmed what I wrote in SM that the Inquisition sent a spy into the Nunez household, and that he discovered the family were practicing Jews. On Saturday nights, Tom said, the family “retreated to a synagogue in an underground part of [their large home], concealed by a movable bookcase in the library.”
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Tom reported that the graduate student found digitized official records of Dr. Nunez’s Inquisition Case, number 2367, “which indicates that on August 23, 1703, prisoner Diogo Nunez Ribeiro was taken by Andre Lopes at the Palace of the Estaus, in the Rossio Square in Lisbon, at the entrance of the secret cells of the Inquisition” and was “charged with ascribing to Judaism and encouraging associates to reject Christianity.”
Although several prominent people testified in his defense, Dr. Nunez broke under torture and confessed. On September 13, 1704, he was sentenced to “perpetual imprisonment,” which amounted to house arrest. Plus, the state confiscated some of his assets and he was forced to attend daily sessions at the Dominican Catholic Church designed to convert him to Christianity.
Two years later, Dr. Nunez “managed to regain some of his medical influence and social contact,” Tom wrote. Between 1700 and 1735 some 1,500 Portuguese Jews fled to Britain and the Netherlands. “After careful planning and after liquidating his assets and sending the funds to trusted Jewish friends in London,” Tom wrote, Dr. Nunez engineered his family’s escape.
He and his family “went to Christian Church on a Sunday morning and then proceeded to the river shoreline like any other Sunday,” Tom wrote. But instead of a leisurely afternoon stroll, the family rendezvoused with a British sea captain who spirited them off to London, leaving behind their “mansion, furniture, China, prestige, and security.”
And, as I wrote in the book, when the Nunez family arrived in London they joined a colony of some 6,000 fellow Sephardic escapees from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. Soon after arriving, Dr. Nunez remarried his wife, Gracia (known as Rebecca) in a London synagogue that many other Sephardic refugees joined. The family formally converted to Judaism in London and Dr. Nunez and his two sons, as part of the conversion, underwent the rite of ritual circumcision.
A group of wealthy London Jews paid for the passage of a chartered ship that sailed from London in the summer of 1733 with 42 Sephardic Jews aboard, including the Nunez family. After a rough voyage, the ship, the William and Sarah, landed in Savannah, Georgia, on July 11, 1733, six months after James Oglethorpe established the colony named after his patron, King George II. At the time, there were fewer than a thousand Jews living in the 13 British colonies.
DR. KAMENSKY: Dr. Jane Kamensky will become the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s next president on January 15. I hope to have an interview with the former Harvard University historian, focusing on the Levy family’s stewardship of Monticello, in next month’s newsletter.
CORRECTED
CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, my
correction about Frances Wolff Levy Lewis being the eldest (not the
second-eldest) of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon
Levy, I wrote that Nancy Hoffman (who emailed about the error) was Fran’s
daughter. Nancy, in fact, is Fran’s niece. I also mistakenly said that
Nancy, who was born in 1930, was the last of L. Napoleon. Levy’s living children;
she is the last of his living grandchildren.
Here’s a snapshot from the Malcom Stern’s pioneering book, The American Jewish Families: 1654-1988, with the info on Nancy’s three aunts and her mother Alma:
EVENTS: I am still at work on my next book, a slice-of-life biography of U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War, which will published next spring. So, no events this month. For details on future book talks and other author events, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events
MARCLEEPSON.COM: Speaking of the website, with the help of a terrific web designer, I have just redesigned and updated mine, which was born in 2001 in time for the publication of Saving Monticello. I hope you’ll agree that the site is streamlined and reader friendly. It also includes a page for ordering autographed copies of my books. The image below is the centerpiece of the new landing page.
My daughter
Cara Rose Alford created the site through her design company, Allegory Art
Consulting in Charleston, South Carolina. Check out her website, allegoryartconsulting.com
GIFT IDEAS: For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, go to the new page on my website https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stock of new copies of five 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.
