How the Levys Saved Monticello

Uriah Phillips Levy (left) and his nephew Jefferson Monroe Levy (right). Public domain.

Visitors to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation outside Charlottesville, Virginia, find a house and grounds so well kept that Jefferson might walk in at any moment. It nearly did not survive. For most of the century after his death, it was cared for by one family: the Levys.

Debt and ruin

Jefferson died in 1826 deep in debt, with the estate already run down. His grandson and executor, Thomas J. Randolph, had to sell almost everything to pay creditors. The house needed so much repair that buyers stayed away until 1831, when a Charlottesville druggist, James Turner Barclay, paid about $7,500.

In two years Barclay did nothing to repair it. He ripped out many of Jefferson's trees and gardens to plant mulberries for a silkworm farm. Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, wrote to a friend: "The garden is plowed up to the door and planted in corn. The terrace is a complete wreck. The place, I am told, is so totally changed that it is distressing to see it."

Uriah Levy, 1834–1862

In 1834 Barclay sold to Uriah Phillips Levy for $2,500. Levy was a fifth-generation Jewish American, a U.S. Navy officer and a hero of the War of 1812. Despite antisemitism in the service, he rose to become its first Jewish commodore and was instrumental in ending flogging in the Navy. He admired Jefferson, above all his ideals of religious liberty.

He chose to keep and preserve the house as Jefferson built it, not remodel it. When he died in 1862, his will left Monticello to the U.S. government, believing that was best for it. The government, with no experience of owning such a place, declined. With the Civil War under way, the estate fell to the Confederacy. After the war Levy's heirs contested the will and won the property back in 1879.

Jefferson Levy, 1879–1923

The same year, Uriah's 27-year-old nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, took charge. He too refused to modernize, restoring the house as close to Jefferson's design as he could and spending around $1 million over 44 years. As interest in Jefferson grew toward the end of the 19th century, he opened Monticello to the public and received dignitaries from around the world.

Not everyone thought a private owner should hold it. In 1911, Maud Littleton began a campaign for the government to take it over as a public museum. Levy was offended: "I cannot commercialize the sentiment of years by putting a price upon this noble property."

Money troubles changed his mind. In 1919 he agreed to sell. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, formed in 1923, bought Monticello for $500,000 and took ownership on December 1, 1923. Jefferson Levy died three months later.

Monticello today

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation still owns and runs Monticello on its founding purpose: to buy, preserve and maintain it as a memorial to Jefferson and his ideals. That there is a house to visit at all is owed to Uriah and Jefferson Levy, whose family held it across nearly 90 years.

Sources

Based on "Monticello Saved by Levys," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.