LEVY.
In 1836 Uriah P. Levy, Commodore of the United States
Navy, became a citizen of Albemarle by the purchase of
Monticello. He bought the place from James T. Barclay.
It is commonly understood, that it was owing to his exalted
estimation of Mr. Jefferson's political wisdom and conduct
he was led to become the possessor of his home, and thereby
to identify his name with that of the President. He died in
1862, and having no family of his own, and cherishing the
desire to make the place a permanent memorial of the great
statesman, the Commodore devised Monticello to the United
States as a Hospital for the worn-out tars of the navy; and
that arrangement failing, to the State of Virginia, to be used
as a sort of naval school. By the decisions of the courts,
both dispositions were declared invalid. During the Civil
War the property was confiscated. It was placed for the
time in the hands of care-takers, who took no care of it further
than to extort as large gratuities as possible from those
who still resorted to it from admiration of its former presiding
genius. The whole establishment was greatly injured,
and the monument in its burial place, by the chipping of
relic hunters, was literally reduced to a shapeless block.
When public affairs resumed their usual course, the Commodore's
nephew, Jefferson M. Levy, of New York, purchased
the interests of the other heirs, and devoted himself to the
improvement of the estate. Congress also handsomely
enclosed the cemetery, and erected a noble shaft to Jefferson's
memory. Filled with the spirit of his distinguished
kinsman, Mr. Levy has been at much pains and expense to
restore things to the same condition in which Mr. Jefferson
left them; and appreciating the sentiment which impels
multitudes to visit it as a place of pilgrimage, he allows
them entire freedom in repairing to the spot, and surveying
its interesting scenes.
