Saving Monticello: One Family’s Struggle to Make Sure History was Remembered

00:00:10
Speaker 1: Man, we’re back with Our American Stories. Thomas Jefferson’s impact on our country cannot be overstated. He fought for religious liberty, states’ rights, and expanded this country with the Louisiana Purchase. His legacy is memorialized in many locations across the country, not the least of which is his own residence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Monticello. Mark leaps and brings us the story of one family’s fight to honor Jefferson with the preservation of this historic structure.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: Well, this story has several aspects to it, and at its heart, it’s a story of historic preservation; it’s a story of Thomas Jefferson; it’s a story of architecture—Monticello, the history of Monticello; and it’s a Jewish American history story, which we’ll see as we get into it. Starts on one of the most amazing days in American history, and that was the day that Thomas Jefferson died. And I think you probably know what day that Wasly Fourth, eighteen twenty-six. On that day, up at on the mountain at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson died about one o’clock in the afternoon, and then a few hours later, at his farm up in Massachusetts, John Adams died. Our second and third presidents died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic that they were so instrumental in founding. And, you know, people reacted. I mean, they didn’t have CNN back then, but people found out soon enough, sometimes in apocalyptic terms. I mean, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary that these two men dying on this day was a visible and palpable manifestation of divine intervention. Now, whether it was divine intervention at not or not, I’d like you to know one other things about July Fourth, eighteen twenty-six, and Thomas Jefferson. When he died, he was over one hundred and seven thousand dollars in debt.

00:02:07
Speaker 3: Now, that’s a lot of.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: money today, but it was a small fortune back in eighteen twenty-six. We’re talking about it at least two million dollars. So the family was stuck with a two million dollar debt. And who was the family who inherited? Well, first, it was Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Remember, Jefferson’s wife, Martha, had died, and Martha, his oldest of two daughters, served many of the roles that his wife would be, as hostess and so on. And then her son and Thomas Jefferson’s favorite grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph—so Jeff Randolph, as he was known—and Martha, were from the Randolphs of Virginia, you know, one of Virginia’s First Families. But they were land rich in cash poor, and they didn’t know what to do, being saddled with this gigantic debt. So one of the things they did was the year after he died, in January eighteen twenty-seven, they held what they called an executors’ sale up on the mountaintop, in which they auctioned off Thomas Jefferson’s possessions. Well, that sale took place. We don’t know exactly how much it brought in, but we do know that it didn’t do much to whittle down that large debt. So, reluctantly, the Randolph decided they would have to sell Monticello. And, you know, it didn’t sell. It didn’t sell for five years, and it doesn’t sort of compute in the twenty-first century. Monticello is, you know, an icon of American and world architecture. Monticello is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You know, it’s the only residents listed as the UNESCO World. You know what our World Heritage Sites? Well, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon, things like that. You know, if you have a nickel in your pocket—I know people don’t have carry change that much these days—but if you do have a nickel, look on the back; there’s an image of Monticello. Some people have liked to go up to Monticello, hold up a nickel in front of one of the entrances, and we can see the nickel view of Monticello, and it is a gorgeous spot. I mean, it’s almost impossible to take a bad picture of Monticello, standing as it is on this beautiful little mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. So, why did it take four and then almost five years for the Randolphs to sell Monticello? Well, Thomas Jefferson had some interesting ideas about architecture. They weren’t very common in early nineteenth-century America.

00:04:48
Speaker 4: For instance, he was the first person to…

00:04:51
Speaker 2: put a dome on a residence. You know that Monticello has a dome on it. You know, it was one of the first architecturally designed house in the United States. It had that dome. There is no giant staircase. You know, if you go into the entrance hall at Monticello, look around; there is no giant staircase like was common in large mansions of this type. There are two small doors on two sides of the entrance hall where you go upstairs. And, in fact, Thomas Jefferson didn’t really care about the upstairs. There were just mostly plain bedrooms up there for his grandchildren who lived with him, and, you know, Jefferson didn’t really believe in bedrooms. Right on the first floor is his bedchamber, which is basically a bed in an alcove between his cabinet, which is his office, and the library. And it was on the top of a mountain, right? I mean, most of the plantations of the day were built down along on flat ground, usually near rivers, for transportation’s sake, and, you know, those roads were not paid. So it finally did sell in eighteen… By the way, the Randolphs also sold off acreage so Monticello, and, you know, and its surrounding properties. Jefferson inherited about five thousand acres from his father, Peter Jefferson. It was down to about five hundred and fifty-two acres, and the Randolph sold Monticello to a man named James Turner Barkley, who bought it for seven thousand dollars, plus he traded a house in Charlottesville. We don’t have time to talk about James Turner Barkley today, except to say that he was kind of eccentric. He was a medical doctor; he was a pharmacist. But he thought he could go up there at Monticello and do make a silkworm business. So, along Mulberry Row, he planted mulberry trees. The silkworm business didn’t work. You know, it appears as though he almost destroyed the eighteen-acre grove, what Jefferson called an ornamental forest. And we do know that he did not take care of the place. A visitor who came in eighteen thirty-four wrote back that all is in dilapidation in ruin. So, how did Monticello get to be in dilapidation, in ruin, by eighteen thirty-four? Thomas Jefferson, you name a field of endeavor. He was a true Renaissance man. I mean, architecture, archaeology, of course, philosophy. You know, he had the largest private library in the United States before he had to sell it to raise money. Sold in the United States after the War of Eighteen Twelve when the British burned the Congressional Library. You know, he spoke seven languages. Of course, he was President and Vice President, Secretary of State, governor of Virginia. He wrote the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom.

00:07:58
Speaker 4: And, you know, I…

00:08:00
Speaker 2: always illustrated by that great quote that President Kennedy once said when he had a dinner at the White House for Nobel laureates, and he said, “This is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has been gathered at the White House, with a possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” Jefferson had all these talents, but he was not good at business, for whatever reason.

00:08:24
Speaker 4: You know, he inherited all these farms. He bought Natural Bridge.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: It’s in Virginia. It’s a beautiful natural formation of rock. He thought he could make it into tourist attraction.

00:08:35
Speaker 4: You know.

00:08:36
Speaker 2: He bought it from the King of England, you know, during colonial days, but it never made a dine. He owned mills on the river down there—the Ravanna River. They just leaked money. He had bad luck with his agriculture, all those farms. You know, like when the crops were good, prices were low. When the crops were bad, prices were high. He tried famously to grow grapes up there, to start a wine business that never worked.

00:09:02
Speaker 4: You know. He loved to spend money; bought the finest…

00:09:04
Speaker 2: furniture and furnishings from all over the world: New York, Boston, London, Paris. And that place was just filled with beautiful furniture and furnishing.

00:09:18
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Mark Leapsom tell a heck of a story about not just a building, but a man—a man who, well, did almost everything well except hold onto money. He spent more than he had and, in the end, one of the world’s worst businessmen, but one of our great, great, great minds and the architect, in essence, of much of what we hold here today. When we come back, more of the story of how Monticello was saved here on Our American Stories. And we’re back with Our American Stories and the story of Monticello. We just heard about the disarray that Monticello was in, now owned by James Turner Barkley. It was a shadow of what it had once been—his place of hospitality that Jefferson had made it. Back to Mark Leapsom with the story.

00:10:33
Speaker 4: He was also overwhelmed with visitors.

00:10:36
Speaker 2: People would love to come up to Monticello, as they do now, to see his, what President Theodore Roosevelt called, “his essay and architecture.” And they would come; family and friends would; they would come with servants; they would come with enslave people. Sometimes it wasn’t uncommon to have twenty, thirty, or more people living there for days, weeks, months at a time, sometimes. And so, the place, with Jefferson, you know, suffering financially… He just didn’t have what we would call the money to do preventive maintenance. So, James Turner Barkley, he just couldn’t take living up there either. Visitors came up and bothered him. The mulberry business didn’t work, so he sold the place in eighteen thirty-four to a most unlikely buyer, and his name was Uriah Phillips Levy, who was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy at the time, and he purchased Monticello from James Turner Barkley for two thousand and seven hundred dollars.

00:11:40
Speaker 4: Now, Barkley had sold off acreage too.

00:11:42
Speaker 2: It was down to, I think it was, one hundred and ninety acres, one hundred and eighty-two acres, something like that. And the place was into apidation and ruin.

00:11:52
Speaker 4: And what did Uriah…

00:11:53
Speaker 2: Levy do? Well, he was a man of means, and he repaired, preserved, and restored Monticello after he took possession in eighteen thirty-six. And, you know, we have evidence from people who visited that he did really restore the place and preserve it, and restore a low preservation and restoration.

00:12:10
Speaker 4: were not in the language.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: You can make an argument that Uriah Levy was the first American house preservationists. You know, this happened in eighteen thirty… Starting in eighteen thirty-six, we usually look at Anne Pamela Cunningham, who bought George Washington’s Mount Vernon from his heirs after he died and saved it from being divided up and developed. But this was twenty years before that. So, a little bit about Uriah Levy.

00:12:38
Speaker 4: He was a hero of the…

00:12:41
Speaker 2: U.S. Navy, joined the Navy when he was twenty years old in eighteen twelve. He was born in seventeen ninety-two in Philadelphia, and he was a fifth-generation American. He came from one of the most prominent and illustrious Jewish American families. His great-great-grandfather came over here with a group of forty Jews in seventeen thirty-three, escaping the Inquisition from Portugal, went to London. They arrived in Savannah, Georgia, in the summer of seventeen thirty-three, and were among the founders of the city of Savannah, Georgia. His name was Doctor Samuel Munish. He was the only medical doctor in the colony of Georgia. He helped stem an epidemic, probably of smallpox, and he was honored by Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia. He was also a founder of Congregation Nick for Israel in seventeen thirty-three, which the third oldest Jewish congregation. It’s still there, and, of course, not in the original building in downtown Savannah. Jonas Phillips—where the Phillips comes from in Uriah Phillips Alvey—that was his maternal grandfather, and he came to this country in eighteen thirty-six, a merchant from Germany. Settled in Philadelphia, got caught up with the Revolutionary War fervor, and actually joined a Philadelphia militia unit and fought against the Brits.

00:14:00
Speaker 4: And he was influential in…

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Uriah Levy—one of his favorite grandchildren—a love of country. His two heroes were John Paul Jones and George Washington.

00:14:25
Speaker 4: Uriah Levy was born…

00:14:26
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety-two in Philadelphia. Always loved the sea, joined the Navy in eighteen twelve to fight in the war, and he was a hero of the War of Eighteen Twelve. He was assistant sailing master on a ship called the Argus, which captured British ships in the Channel. And they captured twenty-five ships, and when they went to capture the twenty-sixth, the Brits won that battle, killed the captain and kept the crew imprisoned for the rest of the war, including Uriah Levy. And Uriah Levy came home; went on to have a fifty-year career in the U.S. Navy. He died in service in eighteen sixty-two.

00:15:03
Speaker 4: He was a…

00:15:04
Speaker 2: commodore when he died. He was the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy. So, Uriah Levy’s naval career was recognized by the Navy. The first Jewish chapel on any naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, opened in nineteen forty-two, named the Commodore Levy Chapel. It was a destroyer escort named after him. In World War Two, the USS Uriah P. Levy, which actually took part of the Japanese surrender in the Pacific. And then about fifteen years ago—and I think it was twenty-six—the Commodore Levy Center was dedicated at the U.S. Naval Academy. So, his place in naval history is assured. As far as his owning Monticello, the question is, you know, why did he do it? He never set it out in print that we know, but we take an educated guess. One reason is that on his own, in eighteen thirty-three, while he was in Paris…

00:16:05
Speaker 4: while he was in the Navy.

00:16:06
Speaker 2: On his own, he commissioned a full-length statue of Thomas Jefferson by one of the top sculptors of the day, David d’Angers, and he donated that statue to the people of the United States.

00:16:19
Speaker 4: A plaster model.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: He donated to New York City, which is where he lived. Congress got it in eighteen thirty-three, didn’t quite know what to do with it. They finally… it was finally taken to…

00:16:30
Speaker 4: the White House. And if you see old pictures…

00:16:33
Speaker 2: In the first one dawn of photography in the eighteen-sixties, you’ll see that statue of Thomas Jefferson on the lawn of the White House, you know, facing Lafayette Park. It was taken inside in the eighteen-seventies because it wasn’t doing very well outside of front statue, it was cleaned up. It was first put in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, and today it is in the Rotunda—the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol—as you come in one of the entrance, as you’ll see it on the right. And it’s the only privately donated statue in the Capitol.

00:17:14
Speaker 4: Now, I said…

00:17:15
Speaker 2: earlier that Levy was a man of means. He lived in New York City, and in the 1820s, he invested in rooming houses in a farming village in the city.

00:17:27
Speaker 4: That was Greenwich Village.

00:17:29
Speaker 2: And when the streets were paved and artisans and others moved in there, he made a fortune with his real estate ventures in New York City, which is what allowed him to purchase Monticello, to repair, preserve it, and restore it. You know, he didn’t live there full-time. So, Uriah Levy died in eighteen sixty-two in New York City. He was still in service in the Navy, and he left a will in which no one knows exactly what he was thinking when he bequeathed Monticello to the people of the United States to be used as an agricultural school for the orphans…

00:18:07
Speaker 4: of Navy warrant officers.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: I mean, we don’t know if there were any orphans.

00:18:11
Speaker 4: and Navy warrant officers at the time.

00:18:13
Speaker 2: So, Uriah Levy married late in life, didn’t have any children, but he had lots of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. There were sixty-four people who were named in the will, and they filed what was called a partition lawsuit against the will.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Mark Leapsom tell a heck of a story about the man who saved Monticello, and in a way, about the man who built it too. And the book, by the way, is Saving Monticello: The Levy families’ epiquest to rescue the house that Jefferson built. And Jefferson built his house in Charlottesville, Virginia, and also built the University of Virginia there, too. By the way, up the road is Madison’s house, and further up the road is Washington’s. There’s something special about the contribution of Virginia to the birth of this nation. When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Monticello is told by Mark Leapsom here on Our American Stories. And we’re back with our final segment on the battle to preserve part of Jefferson’s legacy: his home, Monticello. Uriah Levy, the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy, owned Monticello.