January 2024

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XXI, Number 1                                                         January 2024

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

DR. NUNEZ: Tom Loftis, a tenth-generation descendant of Uriah Levy’s great-great-grandfather Dr. Samuel Nunez (1668-1741), recently emailed to share his experiences during a recent trip to Portugal. That included what Tom learned about his ancestors, about the Portuguese Inquisition, and about the Nunez family’s 1726 escape from Lisbon to London and then on to the colony of Georgia in 1733. Tom kindly agreed to share the information he gleaned during the trip, including images from a PowerPoint he gave at his church, Saint Luke’s Presbyterian in Dunwoody, Georgia. 

I included a brief sketch of the life of Dr. Samuel Nunez as he came to be known in the United States (and is referred to in eighteenth century documents as Diogo Nunes Riberio, Samuel Riberio Nunez, Samuel Nunis, and Samuel Nunez Riberio) in Saving Monticello, along with the colorful, handed-down story about how he and his Sephardic Jewish family escaped the Portuguese Inquisition. 

In recent years I’ve learned more details about what Dr. Nunez and his family went through during the hellish Inquisition and the details of their escape, including what I reported on in the September 2022 newsletter based on recent genealogical research by Alex Bueno-Edwards. 

Alex had just created a detailed, well-documented  Dr. Samuel Nunes page on Geneanet, a European genealogical database. In preparing the page, Alex relied heavily on research done by Arlindo Correia during a deep dive into the official Portuguese Inquisition records. In 2012, Arlindo Correia uncovered a vast amount of material about the Nunes family’s Inquisition horrors, including new information about their daring, life-saving 1726 escape from Lisbon. 

Tom Loftis uncovered more details about the Nunez family saga with the help of a graduate student at Lisbon University and Rita Mayer Jardim, a Lisbon attorney who specializes in helping descendants of Sephardic Iberian Jews attain Portuguese citizenship—as well as Portuguese Jews in America: Escape from the Inquisition, a Portuguese book (see cover above) by historian Carla Vieira, who specializes in Portuguese Sephardic history. 

For “many generations, the Nunez family kept up its Jewish faith and practices in secret,” Tom wrote, “and some family members met a violent death at the hands of the inquisition.” That included Clara Nunez, who was burned to death in Seville, Spain, in 1632, and Isabel and Helen Nunez, who also were executed that year. 

Dr. Nunez was born, as I noted in Saving Monticello, in Idanha-a-Nova, near Portugal’s eastern border with Spain. What I didn’t know was that he received his medical training in Plasencia and Salamanca in Spain and at the Portuguese University of Coimbra, and began practicing in Lisbon around 1698. 

The family practiced Judaism in secret as Dr. Nunez became a prominent physician in the Portuguese capital providing medical care to King Peter II (also known as Dom Pedro II), who reigned from 1648-1706, and even the Portuguese Grand Inquisitor, along with other prominent Dominican religious figures and Lisbon secular leaders.

Tom confirmed what I wrote in SM that the Inquisition sent a spy into the Nunez household, and that he discovered the family were practicing Jews. On Saturday nights, Tom said, the family “retreated to a synagogue in an underground part of [their large home], concealed by a movable bookcase in the library.” 

Tom reported that the graduate student found digitized official records of Dr. Nunez’s Inquisition Case, number 2367, “which indicates that on August 23, 1703, prisoner Diogo Nunez Ribeiro was taken by Andre Lopes at the Palace of the Estaus, in the Rossio Square in Lisbon, at the entrance of the secret cells of the Inquisition” and was “charged with ascribing to Judaism and encouraging associates to reject Christianity.” 

Although several prominent people testified in his defense, Dr. Nunez broke under torture and confessed. On September 13, 1704, he was sentenced to “perpetual imprisonment,” which amounted to house arrest. Plus, the state confiscated some of his assets and he was forced to attend daily sessions at the Dominican Catholic Church designed to convert him to Christianity. 

Two years later, Dr. Nunez “managed to regain some of his medical influence and social contact,” Tom wrote.  Between 1700 and 1735 some 1,500 Portuguese Jews fled to Britain and the Netherlands. “After careful planning and after liquidating his assets and sending the funds to trusted Jewish friends in London,” Tom wrote, Dr. Nunez engineered his family’s escape. 

He and his family “went to Christian Church on a Sunday morning and then proceeded to the river shoreline like any other Sunday,” Tom wrote. But instead of a leisurely afternoon stroll, the family rendezvoused with a British sea captain who spirited them off to London, leaving behind their “mansion, furniture, China, prestige, and security.”  

And, as I wrote in the book, when the Nunez family arrived in London they joined a colony of some 6,000 fellow Sephardic escapees from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. Soon after arriving, Dr. Nunez remarried his wife, Gracia (known as Rebecca) in a London synagogue that many other Sephardic refugees joined. The family formally converted to Judaism in London and Dr. Nunez and his two sons, as part of the conversion, underwent the rite of ritual circumcision. 

A group of wealthy London Jews paid for the passage of a chartered ship that sailed from London in the summer of 1733 with 42 Sephardic Jews aboard, including the Nunez family. After a rough voyage, the ship, the William and Sarah, landed in Savannah, Georgia, on July 11, 1733, six months after James Oglethorpe established the colony named after his patron, King George II. At the time, there were fewer than a thousand Jews living in the 13 British colonies. 

DR. KAMENSKY: Dr. Jane Kamensky will become the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s next president on January 15. I hope to have an interview with the former Harvard University historian, focusing on the Levy family’s stewardship of Monticello, in next month’s newsletter. 

CORRECTED CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, my correction about Frances Wolff Levy Lewis being the eldest (not the second-eldest) of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon Levy, I wrote that Nancy Hoffman (who emailed about the error) was Fran’s daughter. Nancy, in fact, is Fran’s niece. I also mistakenly said that Nancy, who was born in 1930, was the last of L. Napoleon. Levy’s living children; she is the last of his living grandchildren.

Here’s a snapshot from the Malcom Stern’s pioneering book, The American Jewish Families: 1654-1988, with the info on Nancy’s three aunts and her mother Alma:

 

EVENTS: I am still at work on my next book, a slice-of-life biography of U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War, which will published next spring. So, no events this month. For details on future book talks and other author events, check the Events page on my website: marcleepson.com/events

 MARCLEEPSON.COM: Speaking of the website, with the help of a terrific web designer, I have just redesigned and updated mine, which was born in 2001 in time for the publication of Saving Monticello. I hope you’ll agree that the site is streamlined and reader friendly. It also includes a page for ordering autographed copies of my books. The image below is the centerpiece of the new landing page. 

My daughter Cara Rose Alford created the site through her design company, Allegory Art Consulting in Charleston, South Carolina. Check out her website, allegoryartconsulting.com

 GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, go to the new page on my website https://bit.ly/BookOrdering or email me at marcleepson@gmail.com  I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stock of new copies of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

December 2023

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XX, Number 12                                                        December 2023

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

 

THE DOC: When’s the documentary going to be available? I’ve heard that question countless times since Steven Pressman’s terrific film, “The Levys of Monticello,” began screening at more than a hundred film festivals around the country last year. My answer: As soon as I know, I’ll tell the world. 

So, I’m extremely happy to report that two weeks ago I had an email from Steve letting me know that his award-winning film began streaming on November 24 on several of the big online platforms, including Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Apple iTunes. 

With scores of historic images, “The Levys of Monticello,” which was inspired by Saving Monticello, creatively and effectively tells the story of Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s 89-year stewardship of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello with input from a raft of great on-screen contributors. 

That includes including Susan Stein, Monticello’s longtime curator; Dr. Dan Jordan, the historian and former Thomas Jefferson Foundation president; University of Virginia Professor Emerita Dr. Phyllis Leffler; the renowned Brandeis University Professor of Jewish-American history, Dr. Jonathan Sarna; Niya Bates, the former director of African American history and the Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello; Virginia Commonwealth University Emeritus History Professor Dr. Mel Urofsky, Levy Family descendants Harley Lewis and her son Richard Lewis; and yours truly. So, now’s the time to watch the film from the comfort of your favorite movie watching venue—and to tell everyone you know about it! 

DR. KAMENSKY: The Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced in October that Jane Kamensky will become the organization’s next president, starting January 15. Dr. Kamensky is coming south from Massachusetts, where she has been an American History Professor at Harvard University since 2015 and also has headed the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

We realize Dr. Kamensky is extremely busy as she makes the move to Virginia and assumes the leadership of the Foundation, but we hope to sit down with her for an interview soon and report on it in next month’s (or February’s) newsletter. I’m very much looking forward to hearing her take on the history of Monticello after Thomas Jefferson died, especially Uriah and Jefferson Levy’s 89-year stewardship.   

FOUNDATION HISTORY: A hundred years ago, on December 1, 1923, the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (now the Thomas Jefferson Foundation) sealed the deal for its purchase of Monticello from Jefferson Monroe Levy. The former New York City congressman and big-time real estate and stock speculator had owned Monticello for 44 years, and—like his uncle, Uriah Levy—had restored, repaired, and preserved the house and grounds after it had fallen into serious disrepair during the 17-year legal wrangling (from 1862-79) as family members challenged Uriah’s will in which he left Monticello to the people of the United States to be used as an agricultural school for the orphans of Navy Warrant Officers.

When he signed the title of the property over to the Foundation on December 1, 1923, in New York City, Jefferson Levy received a down payment of $100,000 of the $500,000 purchase price. 

Theodore Fred Kuper, the Foundation’s first director, who was at the closing table, later described the scene: “The cash and the bonds and mortgage were delivered to Levy, and Levy signed the deed conveying full title to the property and all belongings to the Foundation,” Kuper said. 

“This was a very emotional scene and he burst out crying. He said that he never dreamt that he would ever part with the property.

Three months later, on March 6, 1924, at his home on East 37^th Street in New York City, Jefferson Levy died of heart disease, five weeks short of his 72^nd birthday. He is buried in Beth Olom Cemetery in Queens, in the Levy family plot near his illustrious uncle. 

****************

 The Foundation has marked its centennial this year with a series of ceremonial events. The latest, in late November, was a fact-filled livestream presentation by Ann Lucas, Monticello’s Senior Historian Emerita, titled “The Centennial of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation: 100 Years of Education and Preservation.” 

In in, Ann Lucas mentioned the stewardship of the Levy family as she detailed the Foundation’s monumental work preserving and restoring Monticello over the decades and educating the public about Thomas Jefferson and his Essay in Architecture. You can watch the livestream online at https://bit.ly/TJFLiveStream

HUNTLAND: My new book, Huntland: The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, has just been published. My tenth book, it’s my second house history, following the footsteps of Saving Monticello. 

Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, has had several memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant 21st century historic preservation ending. 

The University of Virginia Press is marketing and distributing the book. It’s available online at U-Va. Press’s website, on Amazon, and through local bookstores.

CORRECTION: In last month’s newsletter, I wrote that Francis (Fran) Wolff Levy Lewis was “the second-eldest” of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon Levy and his wife Lillian. Newsletter subscriber—and Fran’s niece—Nancy Hoffman emailed to let me know that her aunt actually was the oldest daughter. Nancy, who was born in 1930, is the last of L. Napoleon Levy’s living grandchildren. 

EVENTS: I am still working on my next book, a slice-of-life biography of Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War scheduled to be published in the spring of 2025. So, no events this month. For details on future talks, check the Events page on my website: https://bit.ly/NewAppearances 

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello or the just-published hardcover of Huntland, e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  

I also usually have a few used Saving Monticello hardcovers, and a stock of new copies of five of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

The SM Newsletter on Line: You can read back issues of this newsletter at http://bit.ly/SMOnline

November 2023

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XX, Number 11                                                        November 2023

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

 

FRAN’S YESTERDAYS: The June 2020 newsletter included excerpts about Monticello in the early 20^th century from “Fran’s Yesterday,” a short, unpublished memoir that Levy descendant Frances Wolff Levy Lewis wrote in 1960. 

Fran Lewis was the second-eldest of the four daughters of Jefferson Levy’s brother Louis Napoleon Levy and his wife Lillian Hendricks Levy. She was born on January 19, 1893, in New York City and married Harold Lewis in February 22, 1916. They had three children, including Harley Lewis, the Levy Family descendant who was a tremendous help to me when I was researching Saving Monticello. 

Fran Lewis at Monticello in 1960

Three years ago, Harley’s son Richard Lewis sent me two pages of the memoir in which his grandmother described visiting Monticello as a child with her siblings and parents. A few weeks ago, Richard kindly sent me the entire memoir and a short essay Fran wrote about visiting Monticello in 1908 when she was 15.

What follows are excerpts about the family and Monticello that weren’t in the June 2020 post or in SM. Fran wrote in the memoir that her father, L. Napoleon Levy, “came from a large and colorful family,” noting that one of the most colorful characters was her grandfather Jonas Levy, one of Uriah’s brothers. She was right about the mercurial Jonas Levy, who spent most of his adult life, as Fran put it, as a sea captain. She went on describe what the peripatetic Jonas Levy (1807-83) did after running away from the family home in Philadelphia at 13 and showing up in New York City where his mother, Fanny, was visiting other family members. 

Fanny Levy didn’t take kindly to her young son making his way from Philadelphia to New York and “boxed his ears,” as Fran put it. So young Jonas abruptly left, but didn’t go back home. Instead, as family lore had it, he signed up as a cabin boy, Fran wrote, on “a sailing boat bound for S. America and was not seen by his family for 7 years.” 

Fran Lewis then went on to describe her Uncle Jeff in not exactly flattering words. For one thing, she said that the lifelong bachelor had little use for his young nieces during visits with their parents. When the family showed up at Jefferson Levy’s large townhouse on East 34^th Street, she said. “I don’t think he was at all interested in greeting” us, Fran remembered. And although her uncle was “a very wealthy man in those days, we never received anything of value from him or any gifts on birthday days.” 

She pointed out that Uncle Jeff was “entirely different from my father,” even though the brothers practiced law together and were real estate investor partners. One example: L. Napoleon Levy thrived in the New York real estate business, while his brother, a boom-and-bust speculator, died about $2 million in debt. 

Fran went on to say that she’d heard that her father wrote most of Jefferson Levy’s speeches during his three terms as a Congressman from NYC, and that Uncle Jeff’s grammar was “poor.” She said he always “gave the impression of being a [VIP], which he probably was. Especially in the Waldorf Astoria, where he was well known and where he gave many lavish parties.” 

***************

Fran Lewis wrote an essay she called “The Approach to Monticello” when she was a student at the all-girls Jacobi School on the Upper West Side, founded in 1896 by Laura Jacobi, now known as the Calhoun School. 

Jacobi School for Girls Class of 1915

In the essay she evocatively describes what happened after she and her family arrived by train in Charlottesville from New York City for a visit to Monticello in June 1907. 

As the train pulled “slowly out of the Charlottesville station,” young Fran wrote, “a large phaeton, drawn by a pair of fine beautiful horses,” pulled up to take them to Monticello. The family piled in and the open carriage made its way through the town (or “village,” as Fran put it) of Charlottesville and then onto a “very rough, muddy road” on the outskirts of town. Writing in the present tense, she noted that the carriage “rattles and jolts over the ruts and stones.” 

A few miles later, as the sun was setting over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the carriage began to climb up to Monticello. Just as they started up the steep road, the carriage crossed a “quiet and peaceful” small creek and Fran remembered times when it was “a roaring torrent, carrying great trees and small huts along with it.” 

The road was better that day, but “very steep” and a “heavy pull” for the “strong Virginia horses.” On the way up, they encountered a hay cart drawn by a pair of oxen driven by an older African American man who smiled and tipped his cap as they passed. 

The horses soon grew “tired and thirsty,” she wrote, so the carriage stopped and they drank the “clear, cold water coming form a natural spring” on the side of the mountain. 

The Levys soon reached Monticello’s “pretty brick” Gate House, tended by Eliza Toliver Coleman, whom Fran called “Aunt Liza,” and who swung “back the great gates for us to pass through.” 

Then came a scary ride up a “curved and steep” road aside “a seemingly bottomless ravine” on the way to the house. Eliza had rung the large Gate House bell, “telling travelers on the top of the mountains not to go down,” Fran said, “as it is very dangerous for two vehicles to pass on such a narrow road.”

Eliza Coleman and a child at the old Monticello Gate House

As they neared the Jefferson Family cemetery (visitors then drove up to the house the opposite way they do now; that is, passing by the small graveyard before driving along Mulberry Row). silence “dropped over everything,” Fran wrote, “never have I heard such stillness. The echo of the horses’ hoofs on the stony road and the occasional cry of a peacock are the only sounds.” 

They passed the graveyard, where the headstones “looked white and ghostly” in the twilight. Then the refreshed horses ran “quickly across the lawn” heading for the East Front of the house. “Through the windows the soft light of the lamps seems to welcome us,” Fran wrote. 

“We go on past the rustic [long gone] fence, and the sweet scent of the honeysuckle which is twined around it, is blown gently towards us. We give a long whistle. The dogs begin to bark and an answering whistle comes back. On we go around the large lawn. 

“The carriage stops in front of the great mansion; we are quickly helped to alight and taken up the long lawn. The doors of the house are thrown open, showing the Great Hall inside, and we enter amid the barking of the dogs and hearty greetings of the family.” 

Fran Lewis, her sister Agnes, and their cousin Monroe Levy on the West Lawn during an earlier visit, circa 1902

DR. KAMENSKY: The Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced in October that Jane Kamensky will become the organization’s next president, starting January 15 next year. Dr. Kamensky, a Harvard history professor who also directs Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is just the second historian to lead the nonprofit that has owned and operated Monticello since 1923, and the second woman to hold that position. 

Dr. Kamensky taught at Brandeis University and Brown University before joining Harvard’s History Department. 

Dan Jordan, a former history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, headed the Foundation from 1985-2008; Leslie Greene Bowman succeeded Dr. Jordan and resigned in April. Gardiner Hallock has been serving as interim President since then. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Kamensky, who shares our belief that Monticello plays a pivotal role in illuminating the enduring ideals and contributions of Thomas Jefferson and telling the stories of those who built and worked at this incredible World Heritage Site,” said Tobias Dengel, who chairs the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. “Dr. Kamensky brings more than 30 years of deep expertise as a distinguished academic at some of the world’s leading institutions and has displayed a continued commitment to civic education and engagement to bring people together.” 

We hope to have an interview with Dr. Kamensky (below) in next month’s newsletter. It’ll focuse on her take on the history of the house after Thomas Jefferson died—not coincidentally, the topic of Saving Monticello.

HUNTLAND: My new book, Huntland: The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, has just been printed and copies are being shipped to the University of Virginia Press, which will begin marketing and distributing the book by the end of the month. My tenth book, it’s my second house history, along the lines of Saving Monticello. 

Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, and has lots of history, memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant 21st century historic preservation story. 

The book will be available online at U-Va. Press’s website and through local bookstores. Meanwhile, here’s the link for the U-Va. Press Fall Catalog with more info about the book: https://bit.ly/U-VaPressHuntland  

EVENTS: Still hard at work on my next book, the slice-of-life biography of Doug Hegdahl, the lowest-ranking and youngest American captured in North Vietnam and held prisoner there during the Vietnam War. So, no events this month. For details on future talks, check the Events page on my website: https://bit.ly/NewAppearances

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

October 2023

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XX, Number 10                                                        October 2023

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

 

‘100 YEARS’ EXHIBIT: The year 1923 was a landmark one in Monticello’s long history. That was the year that Jefferson Levy—who had owned Thomas Jefferson’s Essay in Architecture since 1879, and had repaired, preserved, and restored the house and grounds—sold the property to the fledgling Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. That nonprofit had formed in March with the express purpose of purchasing and running Monticello. 

The Foundation has now owned and operated Monticello for a hundred years and has commemorated its centennial with events throughout the year. That includes a terrific exhibit at the Foundation’s Jefferson Library, dedicated in 2002 a stone’s throw from Monticello. It’s called “100 Years of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation,” and is on display at the Library and online with an informing, and evocative virtual tour.

The exhibit was curated and designed by Anna Berkes, the Library’s Manager of Public Services and Collection Development; Megan Brett, the Manager of Collections Processing and Digital Initiatives; retired Monticello guide par excellence Bill Bergan; and Library volunteer Jeni Crockett-Holme, under the direction of Endrina Tay, the Foundation’s Fiske and Marie Kimball Librarian. 

Jefferson Library Main Reading Room

On a personal note, all of the above folks, and many others at the Foundation, have been strong supporters of my work since the day in 1997 that I came to the Mountaintop to do research for what would become Saving Monticello.      

Here’s the link for the virtual tour: https://bit.ly/JeffLibraryExhibit  And here’s the link for the Jefferson Library’s website with info about visiting hours and access to its extensive collection of material: https://www.monticello.org/research-education/jefferson-library 

CENTENNIAL YEAR CHRONOLOGY: As a date-obsessed, linearly-oriented historian, I felt a burning need to put together a chronology of the Foundation’s 1923 highlights. Also, FYI: the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation dropped the M-word in 2000. 

February 1923 - Gregory Doyle of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, sets up a meeting at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York City to discuss forming a new private, nonprofit to purchase Monticello. Thomas Jefferson Randolph IV, a great-great grandson of his namesake, representing Virginia, journeys north to meet with several wealthy and influential New York City lawyers, including Virginia-born Stuart Gatewood Gibboney. 

March 3 - A follow-up meeting is held meeting at the Lawyers’ Club in New York City at which the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation is born. Gibboney assumes the presidency of the group. Theodore Fred Kuper, a young New York City lawyer who had immigrated to this country as a young boy from Russia in 1891, is made national director with a promised salary of $50 a week. 

Early April – The Foundation announces that an agreement has been reached with Jefferson Levy to purchase Monticello and that it would soon launch a nationwide movement to raise $1 million to purchase and administer the property. 

April 13 – On the 180^th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, a Certificate of Incorporation, or charter, of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc. is filed in the office of New York’s Secretary of State in Albany. A certified copy is filed that day in the County Clerk’s Office in New York City where the Foundation would set up its offices.

The Foundation’s Board of Directors includes U-Va. President Edwin Alderman, Stuart Gibboney, Moses Grossman, and Maud Littleton—the woman who infamously tried to wrest control of Monticello from Jefferson Levy; she would resign the next month. Also on the Board: Nancy Langhorne Astor, better known as Lady Nancy Astor, a native Virginian who was the first woman to serve in the British House of Commons, and her sister Irene Langhorne Gibson of Richmond (below), the original Gibson Girl of the 1890s, the famously beautiful model for hundreds of drawings by her equally famed artist husband Charles Dana Gibson. 

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the former president, also is named to the Board, as well as Governor Lee Trinkle of Virginia and Felix M. Warburg, the extremely wealthy German-born Jewish New York banker and philanthropist who had tried to purchase Monticello for the nation several years before the Foundation was created.

May 31 - The Foundation and Jefferson Levy sign an option for the purchase of Monticello, the 640 acres around it, and all of the furniture and furnishings inside. The price: $500,000. On that same day the Foundation is “domesticated” in Virginia, giving it the legal right to transact business in that state.

June 8 -The Foundation Board unanimously approves the contract. 

June 30 - The deed of trust is executed. Jefferson Levy gives the Monticello Association (the organization of Jefferson descendants that owns the family graveyard at Monticello) an additional half acre of land adjacent to the cemetery to be used as a graveyard for other Jefferson descendants. 

July 14 - The Foundation issues a statement making a public appeal for $1-million for the purchase price and for “the proper and effective maintenance of Monticello as a national memorial throughout all time.”           

December 1 – Jefferson Levy receives the first mortgage payment and signs the title of Monticello over to the Foundation in New York City. Fred Kuper described the scene: 

“The cash and the bonds and mortgage were delivered to Levy, and Levy signed the deed conveying full title to the property and all belongings to the Foundation. This was a very emotional scene and he burst out crying. He said that he never dreamt that he would ever part with the property.” 

December 3 - The Foundation’s Deed of Conveyance is signed in the Albemarle County Clerk’s office in Charlottesville. The news makes the front page of the next day’s New York Times. Soon thereafter, Monticello is open to the public. The Foundation hires two local African American men, Benjamin Carr and Oliver Johnston, to guide visitors through the house.

Thomas Rhodes (second from left) Monticello's long-time superintendent, whom Jefferson Levy hired soon after he took possession of the property in 1879, in the early 1920s with three house tour guides: Robert Sampson, William Page, & Benjamin Carr 

March 6, 1924 - At his home on East 37^th Street in New York City, Jefferson Levy dies of heart disease, five weeks short of his 72^nd birthday. 

1940. The Foundation pays off the mortgage. 

THE HUNTLAND BOOK: The University of Virginia Press will be distributing and marketing my next book, Huntland: The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, which will be coming out in just a few weeks. My tenth book, it’s my second house history, along the lines of Saving Monticello.

Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, and certainly has lots of history, memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant twenty-first century historic preservation story.

Here’s the link for the U-Va. Press Fall Catalog with more info about the book: https://bit.ly/U-VaPressHuntland  By the end of the month, it’ll be available in bookstores, on the U-Va. Press website, and through the big online booksellers. 

EVENTS: On Sunday, October 22, I’ll be doing a talk on Saving Monticello and a book signing as part of Hadassah Charlottesville’s “Jewish in Virginia – Our Past, Our Present, Our Future” event at the Hillel Brody Jewish Center at the University of Virginia. 

The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and includes a continental breakfast and buffet lunch—and live Klezmer music. Registration closes on October 13. To register, go to: https://bit.ly/HillelHadassah 

For details on events later this year, check the Events page on my website:  https://bit.ly/NewAppearances 

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  

I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret.

September 2023

 

Saving Monticello: The Newsletter

The latest about the book, author events, and more

Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson

 

Volume XX, Number 9                                                          September 2023

“The study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

 

ISABELLA & MARCUS: In my ongoing quest to research the Levy and Nunez families, I recently came across an evocative image I’d never seen before. It’s a circa 1859 daguerreotype displayed on the John L. Loeb, Jr., Database of Early American Jewish Portraits website. It’s identified as a photographer’s studio image of seven-year-old Jefferson Monroe Levy (in curls and the dress-like shirt on the right) and his nine-year-old sister Isabella, and is in the collection of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City.

Aside from the thrill of seeing what appears to be a photograph of Jefferson Levy as a child, coming across the image also piqued my curiosity about Isabella, whom I mentioned only briefly in Saving Monticello. To wit: that she was known as “Belle,” was the oldest of Jonas and Fanny Levy’s five children, married Marcus Ryttenberg, and often visited her younger brother at Monticello after her son Clarkson Potter Ryttenberg was born in 1881. 

According to the late Malcolm Stern’s authoritative The First American Jewish Families genealogies, Isabella was born on December 12, 1849, in Vera Cruz in Mexico where her peripatetic father, a ship captain, and his wife Fanny were living. Her younger sibling Jefferson Monroe, came along on April 15, 1852, when the family was living in New York City. Two years later, their second son, Louis Napoleon, was born in NYC. Then came Amelia, born in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 1862; and Mitchell Abraham Cass, born 13 months later in New York. 

I have since learned that on January 15, 1879, when she was 30 years old, Belle married Marcus Ryttenberg (mea culpa: I spelled his name incorrectly—Ryttenburg—in Saving Monticello), who was born in Russian-occupied Poland in January 1846 and emigrated to the U.S about 20 years later with his family. The wedding took place in New York City. Just two months later, another Levy family big event took place: On March 29, 1879, Isabella’s brother Jefferson took control of Monticello by buying out his uncle Uriah Levy’s other heirs after a 17-year legal battle over who would inherit the property. 

Marcus and Belle had a son they named Clarkson Potter Ryttenberg in 1881. The family lived in several places in New York City, moving in the nineteen-teens to a large townhouse at 17 E. 37^th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, less than a block from what is today the Morgan Library and Museum, the former home of J.P. Morgan. It also happened to be where Jefferson Levy lived.

It's likely that Isabella moved in with Jefferson Levy (a bachelor) because Marcus Ryttenberg spent most of his time, mainly in the fall and winter, in the small city of Sumter in central South Carolina, about 100 miles northwest of Charleston. Marcus ran J. Ryttenberg & Sons, a flourishing dry goods store in Sumter, along with two other family businesses. 

Marcus, his father Joseph, older brother Harry, and younger brother Abe had fled Poland and settled in Sumter in the late 1860s, mostly likely in 1867, just two years after the end of the American Civil War.

According to an 1889 article in the local newspaper, The Watchman and Southron, Joseph Ryttenberg moved to Baltimore in 1870 and his son Marcus, “the first member of this family to live in Sumter, is credited with beginning the business here.”  

The store, as one of its frequent local newspaper advertisements put it—carried an “elegant line of Dry Goods, Notions, Carpets, Cloaks, Shoes, Clothing and Groceries,” much of it brought in from New York. By 1888, the “mammoth establishment” was “by far,” another ad proclaimed, “the largest business of any house in Sumter.” 

The Ryttenbergs, who worshipped at Temple Sinai, a reform synagogue in Sumter, also owned their own brickyard on the outskirts of Sumter. “Known as the Sumter Brick Yard,” it was “one of the leading industries of the Sumter community in 1890,” the local newspaper article reported. “The brick produced was used by numerous individuals in building the city. The Ryttenbergs shipped their bricks to all points via a railroad which had constructed a branch to the yard in order to expedite the loading of the shipments. The brick yard at one time had nearly one million bricks on hand for sale.” 

One other thing about the Ryttenbergs and Sumter. Researching the family took me to the 1880 U.S. Census, which reported that the Marcus—listed as a Drygoods Merchant—and Isabelle, “Keeping house,” were living in what must have been a large house on Main Street in Sumter, along with two adult servants and the seven-year-old daughter of one of them. Then I saw something shocking. 

As you can see from the image below, the Ryttenberg Family also included an their infant son, whom they named Jefferson L. Ryttenberg after her brother. The boy was born in New York City in November 1879, and there is no trace of him in any Census, genealogy, or other record after 1880, leading to the only conclusion that the child died that year. 

Marcus Ryttenberg died suddenly of a heart attack in Sumter on September 21, 1906. He was 50 years old and the family shipped his body by train to New York City for burial. Isabella died on July 7, 1925, and is buried at Beth Olom Cemetery in Queens, where her brother Jefferson Levy, uncle Uriah Levy and other family members are buried. 

THE PIER MIRRORS: Only a handful of furniture and furnishing in Monticello today have been in the house since Thomas Jefferson’s time. They include the famed seven-day Great Clock framing the door of the Entrance Hall, the ladder Jefferson designed to wind the clock, and the striking pier mirrors also in the Entrance Hall. 

Jefferson purchased the mirrors when he served as U.S. Minister (Ambassador) to France from 1785-89, and had them shipped to Virginia in 1790. They were installed in the Parlor’s Entrance Hall sometime before 1900 and have been there ever since. 

I mention the mirrors several times in Saving Monticello, as visitors throughout the 19^th century and into the early 20^th century often commented on them. They also played a role in the legal wrangling over what conveyed with the sale of Monticello by James Turner Barclay to Uriah Levy in 1834. Barclay claimed the mirrors and the Great Clock were his. Levy sued, saying they should be part of the sale. The matter was not settled until two years later when the sale closed and the parties agreed that clock and pier mirrors would stay in the house. 

I also reported that in 1903, Jefferson Levy told a newspaper reporter in Washington that the architects then in charge of remodeling the White House had asked to buy the mirrors.

“I replied that I did not feel at liberty to part with them, even for so laudable a purpose as letting them go to the White House,” Levy said. 

“I wrote to the architects saying that I had no objection to having the mirrors copied, and I understand that this will be done. The mirrors at Monticello are beautiful specimens of the Louis XVI period, and were purchased by Jefferson in France.” 

The next time you’re in Monticello’s Parlor be sure to stop for a minute and admire those historic mirrors—not to mention the fully preserved and functional Great Clock. 

THE HUNTLAND BOOK: The University of Virginia Press will be distributing and marketing my next book, Huntland: The Historic Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, which will be coming out the first week of October. It’s my tenth book and my second house history, along the lines of Saving Monticello. Huntland, in Middleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, and certainly has lots of history, memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant twenty-first century historic preservation story. Stay tuned for more details.

Here’s the link for the U-Va. Press Fall Catalog with more info about the book: https://bit.ly/U-VaPressHuntland 

EVENTS: I’m still in full-time writing mode on what will be my 11^th book, a slice-of-life biography of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American held as a POW in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. It will be published by Stackpole Books, most likely next fall. As a result, I don’t have any book talks scheduled for September. For details on events later this year, check the Events page on my website:  https://bit.ly/NewAppearances 

GIFT IDEAS:  For a personally autographed, brand-new paperback copy of Saving Monticello, please e-mail marcleepson@gmail.com  

I also have a few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of new copies of my other books: Flag: An American Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Wars of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.