August 2023
Saving Monticello: The Newsletter
The latest about the book, author events, and more
Newsletter Editor - Marc Leepson
Volume XX, Number 8 August 2023
“The study of the past is a constantly evolving,never-ending journey of discovery.” – Eric Foner

‘READSAVING MONTICELLO’: One of the most rewarding aspects of having researched, written, andspoken widely about Saving Monticello for all these years has been getting to know (in person and online)descendants of Uriah and Jefferson Monroe Levy and of Samuel Nunez, UPL’sgreat-great grandfather.
Most recently, I had the pleasureof meeting Nancy Hoffman, a grandniece of Jefferson Levy, and her son Rob forthe first time in July. They had just made a pilgrimage to Monticello and stoppedby for a short visit here in the Northern Virginia Piedmont before heading toAnnapolis, Maryland, for a tour of the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center andJewish Chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Nancy Hoffman, who was bornin 1930, is a grandniece of Jefferson Levy and a granddaughter of JML’s brother,fellow lawyer and real estate business partner Louis Napoleon Levy. Nancy’s mother, Alma Hendricks Levy Bookman, was one of L.Napoleon Levy’s four daughters.

Nancy—like her great-uncleJefferson Levy, her grandfather, and their uncle Uriah P. Levy—lives in New YorkCity. Rob Hoffman was visiting from his home in Michigan.
The day before I had let the folksat Monticello know that the Hoffmans were on their way to the mountaintop for avisit, and the staff gave them a warm welcome. Their guide on the house tour “gavea good spiel,” Nancy later told me in an email, “and he dutifully included theLevys. He even admitted us to the dome [room] and the upstairs [bed] chambers.”
After their special housetour, Rob and Nancy took a walk around the grounds and popped in on anothertour guide, Dick Ruffin as he was concluding a tour in thepost-1809 kitchen located in Monticello’s South Pavilion near the house.
Nancy said that not longafter they joined the group as the tour was ending, Dick Ruffin “launched rightinto the Levy ownership, unprompted.” After he did, Nancy said, “we revealedour connection and he was very excited to have the family on the premises.” Soexcited—and happy—that the guide exclaimed, “Oh, Hallelujah!” when Rob told himthat he and his mother were Levy descendants.
Nancy toldthe group that she remembers the first time she came to Monticello for a visitwhen she was ten years old, and was “mesmerized” when she learned that her motherand her sisters played in the Dome Roomof “Uncle Jeff’s house” when they visited as young children a generationearlier.
Rob posted afour-minute video of Dick Ruffin (below, in the light blue shirt) ending his tour talking about Uriah purchasingMonticello in 1834 and Jefferson Levy selling the property to the ThomasJefferson Foundation a hundred years ago, in December 1923.

It includeshis reaction to meeting the Hoffmans and his recommendation to them and the groupto “Read Saving Monticello. It’s a book about Uriah Phillips Levy” andthe family’s stewardship of Monticello.
You canwatch the short video at https://bit.ly/ReadSMonticello
The Hoffmans’ visit to the Naval Academy the following day was “extremelyspecial, too,” Nancy Hoffman told me. Jan Zlockie, the administrator of the Friendsof the Jewish Chapel (the nonprofit that raised the funds to build the LevyCenter and Chapel), arranged for them to drive onto and explore the Academy’sgrounds.
“Then we went to Friday nightservices at the chapel (below) and everyone we met bent over backwardsto show us their large collection of Uriah memorabilia.”
At the end of the evening, DavidHoffberger, the USNA’s Chapel Facilities Manager, had a surprise for theHoffmans. He “took us to a closet inside the temple,” Nancy said. Fromthere, he gave us a piece of a wooden fence from Uriah’s time at Monticello. We were thrilled.”
That rare artifact of the Levys’ ownership of Monticello isnow on display in Nancy’s Greenwich Village townhouse, “near my oldest family object,an advertisement for Jonas Phillips’ Philadelphia Vendue Store from 1776,” she said.
THE HUNTLANDBOOK: The University of Virginia Press will be distributing andmarketing my next book, Huntland: TheHistoric Virginia Country House, the Property, and Its Owners, which willbe coming out the first week of September.
It’smy tenth book and my second house history, along the lines of Saving Monticello. Huntland, inMiddleburg, Virginia, was built in 1834, and certainly has lots of history,memorable owners and visitors (including Lyndon Johnson when he was SenateMajority Leader and Vice President), and a triumphant twenty-first centuryhistoric preservation story. Stay tuned for more details.

Here’sthe link for the U-Va. Press Fall Catalog with more info about the book: https://bit.ly/U-VaPressHuntland
EVENTS: I’m in full-time writing mode on another book, a slice-of-lifebiography of Doug Hegdahl, the youngest and lowest-ranking American held as aPOW 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 August.
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 havea few as-new, unopened hardcover copies, along with a good selection of newcopies of my other books: Flag: AnAmerican Biography; Desperate Engagement; What So Proudly We Hailed; Flag: An American Biography; and Ballad of the Green Beret: The Life and Warsof Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler.