June 2026

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

Volume XXIII, Number 6                                                      June 2026

MICHIE TAVERN: If you drive to Monticello from Charlottesville, as nearly all visitors do, coming to the mountaintop via State Rte. 53 (Thomas Jefferson Parkway), you cannot miss another historic building sitting alongside the road about two-thirds of the way up: Michie Tavern.

The meticulously restored property—an official Virginia Historic Landmark that for years has been a restaurant and tourist attraction—does, indeed, date from 1784, as its sign says. That’s when William Michie (“MICK-ee”) opened a tavern, but it was not on the Monticello mountain road in Charlottesville.

The Scotsman built his drinking and dining establishment near Earlysville, Virginia, then and now a rural area in Albermarle County located about 17 miles north of Monticello.

The tavern didn’t arrive at its present location until 1927 when an entrepreneurial antiques collector, Josephine Henderson (1872-1958), bought the then-derelict tavern. She then had the building dissembled and moved to the mountain where it was refurbished into a tourist attraction filled with her collection of antiques.

That was just four years after the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation had purchased Monticello from Jefferson M. Levy, after the property had been owned by the Levy family for 89 years. When Henderson brought the tavern to the mountain, the Foundation was in the first stages of repairing and restoring Monticello, its outbuildings, and its grounds.

The Foundation’s goal, as I noted in Saving Monticello, was to reshape the property to appear much as did during Thomas Jefferson’s retirement years, 1809-1826. That effort, by necessity, included erasing all traces of the nearly 90-year ownership of Monticello by the Levy family.

The Foundation held a public auction of Jefferson Levy’s furniture at Monticello, on November 17, 1928, all of which had conveyed with the 1923 sale.

That included tables and chairs, sofas, carpets, chandeliers, clocks, vases, statuary, paintings, lamps, beds, bureaus, dressers, chests, and a pair of twin beds. Some large items were shipped to New York City where they were sold at auction at the Plaza Hotel in December.

As for Josephine Henderson, she had recently moved to Charlottesville from Connecticut with her husband, M.M. Henderson. The move came about when he relocated his business, which the Charlottesville Daily Progress described as a “big” manufacturer of “high grade underwear,” a “nationally known and advertised product.”

 During the planning for the move south, Josephine Henderson conceived the idea of acquiring, restoring, and moving Michie Tavern. The object was to turn it “into a profitable business,” former Monticello guide Bill Bergen wrote recently in a fascinating article in the Magazine of Albemarle Charlottesville History.

Bergen pointed out that among Henderson’s purchases for the house/tavern museum—most likely at the November 17, 1928, auction—was one pair of the four large stone lions that Jefferson Levy had arrayed on the property. Those two “Levy Lions,” which sat on Monticello’s West portico steps, had conveyed with all of Levy’s other furniture and furnishings with the sale to the Foundation. 

It appears that Josephine Henderson briefly displayed one of the lion statues at her home in Monticello, then sent both of them to her sister Meredith Caldwell in Nashville. She, in turn, subsequently donated the lions to that city’s Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum. 

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation acquired the lions about ten years ago; today they are in storage on the mountaintop.

How familiar Josephine Henderson was with “the foundation’s concurrent efforts to preserve Monticello is unknown,” Bergen noted, “but central to Henderson’s ambitions was her knowledge that Monticello already drew thousands of visitors—over 49,000 in 1927—nearly all of whom would pass the relocated Michie Tavern as they traveled along what is now Route 53 to visit” Monticello.”*

Milton and Vestal Grigg bought the Michie property from Josephine Henderson in 1934, and moved into the tavern. Milton Grigg (1905-1982), an architect who specialized in historic restoration, used one of the property’s outbuildings as his office.

That same year, Bergen noted, Grigg helped design Monticello’s new entrance and exit roads. The next year joined the foundation’s four-person Monticello Restoration Committee chaired by the noted architect Fiske Kimball, then the head of New York University’s Fine Arts Department.

Milton Grigg went on to play a pivotal role in the Foundation’s preservation and restoration of Monticello for the next two decades. As Bergen pointed out, since Kimball and the other committee members did not live near Charlottesville, Milton Grigg “served as the Restoration Committee’s ‘resident member.’”

Among other things, Grigg was instrumental in the restoration of Monticello’s “north and south dependencies and the stables, the installation of central heating and air conditioning, and archaeological investigations at Jefferson’s birthplace, Shadwell,” Bergen wrote.

“Today,” he said, “Grigg’s influence at Monticello is reflected in the name of the building where Monticello’s executive offices are located. Although it has been reconfigured several times, the current Grigg Building retains the core structure designed by Grigg in the early 1950s to serve as a visitors’ center, ticket office, and gift shop.”

In the article, Bill Bergen reported that after the Griggs divorced in 1939, Vestal Grigg operated Michie Tavern for the next 30 years.

“Not content to promote the false claim that the Tavern was Patrick Henry's boyhood home,” he wrote, “she made increasingly outlandish claims about its historical significance.”

That false advertising drew the opposition of the local historical society, a contretemps that Bergen examines in detail in his article.

                                            ________________________________

* William W. Bergen, “The Monetization of Memory: The First Forty Years of Marketing Michie Tavern,” Magazine of Albemarle Charlottesville History (Vol. 83, 2025).

DR. NUNES: A LIFE: Richard Eunice, a descendant of Uriah Levy’s great-great grandfather, Dr. Samuel Nunes (sometimes spelled Nunez) and a subscriber to this newsletter, has recently published The Life and Legacy of Dr. Samuel Nunes.

In this concise, well-written and researched biography of his illustrious ancestor, Rich Eunice covers Dr. Nunez’s life under the thumb of the Portuguese Inquisition; his daring escape from Lisbon with his family; their time in London; the sea voyage to Georgia with a group of other Jews escaping the Inquisition in 1733; and his many accomplishments after reaching these shores.  

The book is based on extensive research from many sources, including the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition (Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo), the Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, and the archives at Mickve Israel in Savannah and Shearith Israel in New York City.

His book, Rich Eunice writes, “serves as more than a biography. It is a testament to the ‘Nunes Spirit’—that rare combination of scientific intellect, religious devotion, and unyielding resilience.”

For more info and to order a copy, go to richardmeunice.com or check out online booksellers.

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. 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 of my books that are in print, go to https://bit.ly/BookOrdering