September 2024

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 9                                                         September 2024

 

A ‘Heroic Man’ and ‘Noble Officer’: Uriah Levy’s death in his 70^th year on March 22, 1862,* at his New York City East Village residence, 105 St. Mark’s Place, spawned headlines and accolades in newspapers in New York and Virginia, where he lived. 

The Richmond, Virginia. Daily Dispatch, in reporting Levy’s demise, for example, described him as “a man of good personal appearance” and “refined education” (although UPL had little formal schooling), and opined that he was “distinguished for many acts of personal bravery.” 

The article also noted that Uriah Levy “was the owner of Monticello, Jefferson’s residence in Virginia.” He was the owner in that newspaper’s view, because the Confederate States of America had confiscated Monticello after the Civil War began a year earlier as it was owned by a northerner. When Levy died, his lawyers had been contesting that seizure in the Confederate courts for about a year, a lawsuit that they would lose in the fall of 1864. 

Back in March of 1862, The New York Times and The New York Herald ran laudatory obits. The Herald described Uriah Levy as “a sterling American patriot” and “a heroic man and noble officer,” and didn’t stop there. A “faithful naval officer,” the paper said, he was known for his bravery and “the honesty of his character and motives.” 

Both newspapers provided details of his funeral, which started in the parlor of his house on St. Mark’s Place in New York, and which I briefly described, based on those articles, in Saving Monticello.

I wrote in the book that Levy had a Jewish funeral with patriotic flourishes and that Rabbi Jacques Judah Lyons, of New York’s Sephardic Congregation Shearith Israel (which the Herald described as “the West Nineteenth street synagogue congregation”), presided at the funeral. 

I didn’t report that Levy was laid out in a plain rosewood coffin. Nor that on its lid, the Herald noted, “were placed the sword, hat and coat of the deceased, while a solitary candle burned at the head and feet of the same. The parlor where the body reposed, and the bedchambers leading thereto were crowded with sympathizing friends and naval officers.” 

A large, full-length portrait of the Commodore hung on one of the walls of his house. Said portrait (in photo below) later was shipped to Monticello, and today resides in the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis. 

Uriah Levy’s niece, Amelia Mayhoff, donated the portrait to the Academy following the death of her brother, Jefferson Levy, a few months after he sold Monticello to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in December 1923. 

The Rev. Mr. Lyons, as he was referred to in the newspapers, led the assembled in prayer at the house. Then, at around 2:00 in the afternoon, six U.S. Navy pallbearers caried the casket to a hearse outside with funereal music provided by a 20-piece Navy Brass Band from the U.S.S. North Carolina, a 74-gun ship of the line docked in New York that had been in service since 1820. 

A “large crowd of persons” stood outside the house to pay their respects. Three companies of Marines and a detachment of eighty sailors from the North Carolina accompanied the funeral hearse and carriages filled with family and friends as they moved slowly to the old dock at Grand Street, and then onto a ferry boat that took them across the East River to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The procession then made its way to Uriah Levy’s final resting place, Beth Olam Cemetery (below), then known as Cypress Hill Cemetery, which straddles the border between Brooklyn and Queens.

Arriving at the cemetery, The Times reported, “the deceased was placed in the receiving-house, when the mourners, in accordance with Jewish custom, made the circuit of it seven times, chanting verses illustrative of the mercy of God and the mortality of man.” 

The casket then “was lowered into the grave where the nearest relatives offered a prayer, threw dust upon the coffin and the obsequies were finished.” 

As I noted in the November 2020 Newsletter, Uriah Levy left specific instructions for the monument he wanted over his grave. He envisioned a full-length, life-sized statue of himself, either in iron or bronze, standing on a single block of granite sunk three feet in the ground. 

He specificized that the stature depicted him in the full uniform of a U.S. Navy captain, holding a scroll in his hand. The scroll was to be inscribed: “Uriah P. Levy, Captain in the United States Navy, Father of the law for the abolition of the barbarous practice of corporal punishment in the Navy of the United States.” 

But that was not to be because Shearith Israel decided that statues of the deceased are not appropriate in Jewish cemeteries. The request for a life-sized statue, “caused the congregation some discomfort,” according to the Shearith Israel website’s Beth Olam Cemetery page, which notes that while  it is important to honor the wishes of the deceased, it is also prohibited by halakha [Jewish law based on the Talmud] to erect a statue in human form.”  

Instead, the marble monument (below) features a flag-draped column adorned with a bas relief of a sailing ship and other naval and patriotic imagery. 

The epitaph, however, is nearly the same as what Uriah Levy envisioned. It reads: “In memory of Uriah P. Levy, Father of the Law for the abolition of the barbarous practice of corporal punishment in the Navy of the United States.”

*As I was fact-checking this, I saw that the Uriah Levy Wikipedia page listed his date of death as March 26, 1862. I knew that was incorrect because I had read a short death notice in the March 24, 1862, New York Herald—plus, 25 years ago when I was researching Saving Monticello, I found other solid evidence that Levy died on March 22 and said so in the book.  

But to triple check, I went to Find-a-Grave hoping there’d be an image of his giant gravestone. There was. And that confirmed the date of his death as March 22. Then I did what any historian would do: I changed the date to the correct one on Wikipedia. 

EVENTS: None scheduled for September, but I will be doing more events in the fall and winter, including talks on Saving Monticello. I also will be doing talks and media interviews starting in early December for my new book, The Unlikely War Hero, a slice-of-life biography of the extraordinary Vietnam War story of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest ranking American prisoner held in Hanoi during the war. 

If you’d like to arrange a talk on that book, on Saving Monticello, or any of my other books, feel free to email me at marcleepson@gmail.com 

For details on upcoming events, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

COMMERCE: I have brand-new paperback copies of Saving Monticello and a few as-new hardcovers. To order personalized, autographed copies, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me directly at marcleepson@gmail.com 

I also have a stack of six of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; Ballad of the Green Beret, and Huntland.