Shattuck is home in Cleveland, MS with his Grandparents.   Lale and I are in Charlottesville, VA for Evans Wilson’s wedding.


Lale, Bond and I drove up yesterday from Memphis.  Today he is studying for the CFA (level II) while Cooper, Lale, and I went to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s Roman neoclassical home located overlooking Charlottesville).




Because Jefferson died more than $107,000 in debt, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph and her son and financial manager, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, found it necessary first to sell nearly all of the contents of Monticello and then to sell the plantation itself. In 1827, the furniture, animals, farm equipment, and slaves were offered at an executor’s sale. In 1831, James T. Barclay, a local apothecary, purchased the home and 552 acres for $4,500, less the value of his own home. Unsuccessful in his attempts to cultivate silk worms there, he offered Monticello for sale barely two years later.

In 1834, Uriah P. Levy, a naval officer who admired Jefferson’s views on religious tolerance, purchased the house. Levy died in 1862 and bequeathed Monticello to the government if certain conditions were met. During the Civil War, the Confederacy seized and sold the property. After the war, the government declined the terms of Levy’s request, and Levy’s heirs contested the ownership. Not until years of litigation had passed did Jefferson Monroe Levy, Uriah P. Levy’s nephew, take possession in 1879. Both uncle and nephew strove to preserve Monticello as a memorial to Jefferson. In 1923, Jefferson Monroe Levy sold Monticello to the newly created Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello today.



Lale sat down in the sun parlor as if she was a guest of Mr.  Jefferson’s.











(below) Cooper found the beer cave under the house.  A dumb waiter took beer and wine up to the dining room.



How is this for a smoker West?  Mr. Jefferson had a built in smoke house.







During his 80s, Jefferson used to come out to this veranda with a glass of medeira to watch his new university being built in the valley below.  Our hotel is directly across campus from The University of Virginia.






















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After visiting the home, we visited his grave down the hill.  His family line is still being buried there today.  Most recently in 2008.