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Fascinating and Lesser Known People Who Changed American History

Khalid Elhassan May 5, 2020 33 min

Normandy landings - Operation Overlord — Men of the 320th in Normandy. YouTube

34. Saving Monticello

The Marquis Lafayette in later years. Military Wikia

While in France to study naval tactics in the 1830s, Uriah Levy arranged a meeting with the Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis Lafayette. The aging marquis asked Levy about Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha Randolph, and of Jefferson’s plantation estate, Monticello. Levy did not know, but promised to find out as soon as he returned home.

Back in America, Levy discovered that Monticello had been sold after Jefferson’s death in 1826 to satisfy his debts. The plantation had been poorly maintained in Jefferson’s later years, as his deep indebtedness prevented him from making necessary repairs. A visitor in 1824 described the mansion as “old and going to decay“, and its gardens and lawns as “slovenly“. Monticello was further neglected by its purchaser, a man named James Turner Barclay. In 1834, Levy struck a deal to take the run down estate and 218 surrounding acres off Barclay’s hands, for $2700.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.