March 2026

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

 

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson 

 Volume XXIII, Number 3                                                 March 2026 

MANAGERS & OVERSEERS: The biggest challenge I faced doing the research for Saving Monticello in the late 1990s came when I realized that Uriah Levy did not keep a diary or journal. Or if he did, I never found them, nor has anyone else who’s written about Levy before or after my book came out in 2001. 

What’s more, I found only a handful of letters Levy wrote. And, in them, he wrote precious little about Monticello, which he bought in 1834 and owned until the day he died 1862. 

 On the plus side, I unearthed a great deal of useful primary-source material on UPL and Monticello—mainly contemporary newspaper and magazine articles; official state, military, real estate, and other documents; and letters written by Martha Jefferson Randolph and her daughters, by visitors to Monticello; and by other members of the Levy family during Levy’s tenure. 

 Using those and other sources, I was able to identify two men who served as Uriah’s farm managers at Monticello, a man identified in letters only as “Mr. Garrison,” and Joel Wheeler, who took over after him. But the sources I found did not reveal exactly when Garrison or Wheeler started at Monticello, nor when they left, though it appeared that the latter departed the mountaintop either just before or after Jefferson Levy took possession in 1879.

I only recently learned more details about Garrison and Wheeler—including Garrison’s first and middle names—through the work of the indefatigable Sam Towler. An independent researcher who lives in Charlottesville, Sam has had a special interest in the people who lived on the mountaintop during Uriah Levy’s ownership and the years after he died. He has spent countless hours and many years searching official Albemarle County records, including real estate documents, wills, birth records, and lawsuits, and has identified a good number of people—including members of enslaved families—who lived and worked at Monticello during that time. 

 Sam has kindly shared his research with me over the years. In February, he emailed to let me know that he had recently learned that a man named Minor Houchins most likely was Uriah Levy’s first farm manager (sometimes referred to as an overseer), as well as the approximate dates of Ira Chapman Garrison’s tenure working for Levy. 

 According to an 1849 lawsuit deposition Sam uncovered, Minor Houchins, who was born in 1811 in Albemarle County, described himself as “the manager and agent for Capt Levy” in 1837. So, it’s quite likely that Houchins started working for Levy in 1836, the year the then U.S. Navy lieutenant had officially taken title to Monticello. As I learned when researching the book, Uriah Levy had signed a contract with the then-owner of Monticello, James T. Barclay, to buy the property on April 1, 1834. 

But the two men immediately squabbled over the exact acreage and what contents of the house would convey with the property, and sued each other. Settling those lawsuits held up the final sale for two years, until May 1836. Which is when Levy took possession of the property and most likely hired Houchins as his overseer. 

According to Sam, Houchins continued working for Uriah Levy’s until 1849, mainly because the 1850 census reveals that Houchins did not live near Monticello that year. As for Ira C. Garrison, Sam’s research shows that he definitely was working as UPL’s overseer in 1853, but could have started the job earlier than that—which would align with the fact that Houchins was gone by 1850. Garrison (c.1819-1892), was born on Rocky Hill Farm in Free Union, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Monticello. 

It appears he worked at Monticello from 1850 to 1860 or 1861. 

The 1860 federal census (snippet above) has him listed as “overseer.” During my research for the book, I had found a June 4, 1858, letter Uriah Levy wrote to his Charlottesville lawyer, George Carr, in which he gave Carr directions for handling his “farming affairs.” In it, Levy reminded Carr that he had been given him “the power to supervise Mr. Garrison and hope you will see that he is economical in his expenditure of money and materials. He has always done well in this….” 

In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, Ira Garrison joined the Second Virginia Artillery Regiment in the Confederate States Army. Joel Wheeler, it appears, became the overseer at Monticello in the fall of 1860 and stayed there until either 1878 or 1879 when Jefferson Monroe Levy took ownership of the property. 

Postscript: Aside from learning about Minor Houchins and more about Ira Garrison, this new information led me to realize that I made a mistake in Saving Monticello when I wrote that in 1839 Joel Wheeler, “had gotten in touch with Uriah’s siblings Jonas and Amelia when their mother [Rachel Levy], who lived at Monticello, died and they arranged to have her buried near the house.” 

I had assumed that Wheeler was the property manager at that time. Now it appears all but certain that Minor Houchins superintended the burial of Rachel Phillips Levy. Mea culpa. 

EVENTS & COMMERCE: I am scheduling events for the rest of the year, most of them on Lafayette: Idealist General and Saving Monticello. I’m also doing talks, podcasts, and other events for all of my books, including Saving Monticello. They’re listed on this page on my website: marcleepson.com/events 

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 BookOrdering 

January/February 2026

 

 

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 (below) 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.”

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.”

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 names, 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