Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about
the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor
- Marc Leepson
Volume XXIII, Numbers 1 &
2 January/February 2026
GETTING WORD: When the subject of Thomas Jefferson and enslaved people comes up, I invariably bring up the fact that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has been a pioneer in telling the stories of the more than 600 people enslaved by Jefferson during his lifetime.
That pioneering
effort began in 1993 when the Foundation started an unprecedented oral history
project called Getting Word. The idea was to record and preserve the family
histories of the African American men, women, and children who lived in bondage
at Monticello.
Founded in Monticello’s History Department by Lucia “Cinder” Stanton and Dr. Dianne Swann-Wright, Getting Word today is more robust than ever. The program’s past and continuing work helps shape Monticello’s public programming and tours as it seeks out, preserves, and shares the stories of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the mountaintop in order to document and tell the complete story of Monticello’s history.
I recently had
the pleasure of speaking to Auriana Woods, who has been Getting Word’s director
since December 2024. We talked about the department’s work and also about
slavery at Monticello during Uriah Levy’s ownership. As I noted in Saving
Monticello, Levy enslaved people on the mountaintop beginning in 1836 after
he took control of the property following a two-year legal battle over what
would convey with the sale when he purchased the property in April 1834.
That situation
continued until the (Confederate) court-ordered sale of all of Uriah Levy’s
estate’s property in the fall of 1864, two years after his death.
Auriana Woods (beflow)
majored in African American Studies as an undergraduate at Brown University.
She received her MA in Oral History from Columbia University before joining
Monticello as an oral historian for Getting Word in June of 2023.
That came at a
propitious time for Getting Word, as the program had recently received a
$3.5-million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
“We’re in a new
chapter,” Auriana told me. “We now have a team of ten people, including
contractors. Getting Word’s growth and ongoing research is only possible
because of the three decades of work that the team has inherited and continues
to build upon, and to steward for future generations of historians.”
The “crux” of
what Auriana hopes to accomplish during her directorship, she said, is
“investing in the hard work of tracking folks whose last names were not
recorded in Jefferson’s written record. Of the 613 known individuals enslaved
by Jefferson during his lifetime, less than a quarter of them were recorded
with a surname.”
Even though
Monticello is “arguably the best-documented plantation in North America,” she
said, the task of finding last names remains a daunting one. But, “with thirty
years of work under our belts and various digital tools to aid in our search,
it is absolutely possible.”
Getting Word’ “began in 1993 as an oral history project aimed at documenting the family histories of Monticello’s enslaved community and their descendants, toward the purpose of producing a more complete understanding of the mountaintop and all those who called it home.
Today, we serve as Monticello’s institutional home for the
study of slavery and as the department of African American History. While
Getting Word is a full-fledged, interdisciplinary research team, oral history
remains central to our work, and we steward a vast archival collection of 400
interview participants and counting,” Auriana said.
“In the past
few years, we have been working to bring Getting Word’s work to a broader
audience, in both the public history field and to the general public.”
Getting Word regularly produces an array of public
programming, workshops, and talks—most recently a Black Family History
Symposium held in Charlottesville on February 7. The day-long event included
panel discussions, talks, and workshops centering on the theme of “Refounding Legacies.”
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The program continues to shape public programming and tours for Monticello’s half-million annual visitors, helping to uncover, preserve, and share the stories of “all those who lived and labored on the mountaintop,” as Auriana put it.
“People associate so many different ideas with Monticello;
some of it accurate, some of it not,” she said. Some visitors might think of
Monticello as Thomas Jefferson’s alone, “not as a plantation that was
predominately home to African American families.” But after touring the site, they
go home with “more nuanced understanding of this nation’s founding and who
belongs to it.
“For me, that idea is what gives the work meaning and drives
me forward: I believe that we would be much a healthier and more well-rounded nation
if we all knew that we belonged to its history, and are responsible for forging
its future.”
THE
LEVY ERA
While Getting Word focuses on slavery during Jefferson’s
ownership, Auriana told me that the program is doing more work than ever on the
enslaved people at Monticello during Uriah Levy’s ownership, as well as on the
African American guides and other staff employed by his nephew Jefferson Monroe
Levy, who took control of Monticello in 1879.
“Just as you cannot
fully understand Jefferson without understanding the vast majority of people
who lived and labored at Monticello,” she said, “in the same vein, we cannot
understand Monticello’s preservation without understanding everyone who contributed
to its survival.”
Getting Word’s work, she said, “has always been about the interconnections
between families, whether white or Black, enslaved or free.” There are blood
and family connections to the original enslaved communities in Jefferson’s time
during the ownership of the Levys.
Those families, she said, include the Hendersons, Colemans,
Sampsons, Carrs, Pages, Fergusons, and Taylors. Members of those families
include descendants of those who were enslaved by Jefferson, as well as late
19th and early 20th century guides and others who worked (in in some cases,
lived) on the mountaintop.
“This place has such a gravitational pull,” Auriana said,
and many descendants of the enslaved community “have stayed close.” That
includes “people living in Charlottesville today.”
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Eliza Tolliver Coleman, for example, in the photo above with her children, served as the gatekeeper at Monticello for Jefferson Monroe Levy during his entire ownership, from 1879-1923. Her husband, Thomas Coleman, who also worked for J.M. Levy, was formerly enslaved by Joel Wheeler, Uriah Levy’s last caretaker at Monticello.
As for the Levy ownership, Auriana notes that Monticello’s
tour guides talk about their stewardship—the main story I tell in Saving
Monticello—during every highlights tour. They also mention the Levys’
stewardship as owners, “which has allowed Monticello to be preserved and exist
today, allowing us to continue to do this work.”
THE
CONTEMPLATIVE SITE
“We talk a lot about names here,” Auriana Woods said of the
Getting Word department.
There’s no better physical example of that than Monticello’s
Contemplative Site, a memorial dedicated in 2023 on the mountaintop to honor
and list the known names of people enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. “All of them have
last name, we just don’t know them all yet,” Auriana said.
Located at the foot of Mulberry Row, the
60-foot-long steel wall contains the names listed chronologically by birthdate.
Blank spaces are included to make additions as the Getting Word staff uncovers
more names.
That happened in August last year when Getting Word held a private dedication ceremony commemorating their recent discoveries of the names of six additional people enslaved by Jefferson: Child, born about 1815-1819; Moses, born in February 1790; Nanny, born in 1776; Mary Ann Hern, born in late 1823; Child, born in 1802; and Robert, born about 1815-18.
“Tracking small details and reading between the lines is critical when researching Black history at Monticello,” Auriana said at the time of the dedication. “Traces of evidence can come from anywhere or anyone, and it takes the effort of many hands—descendants, scholars, and interpreters—to bring those lives back into focus.”
More info about
the Getting Word African American History department at: https://gettingword.monticello.org/
EVENTS
& COMMERCE: I am scheduling events for 2026,
most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General and Saving Monticello.
I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for all of my books.
If you’d like to arrange a talk, podcast appearance, or other event on any of my books, feel free to email me at marcleepson@gmail.com To order signed copies, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering
