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