The Monticello Gatehouse
For one family, Monticello was home for almost two centuries, much longer than for anyone who held title to the property. Some members of this extended family were midwives for the local community and ox team drivers, cooks, and household employees of the Levy family, Monticello's owners from 1879 to 1923.
Beginning in the 1860s and continuing for 100 years, generations of this family greeted visitors at the Monticello gate or worked in the house as guides after the Thomas Jefferson Foundation assumed ownership of the house in the 1920s. Their descendants have vivid childhood recollections of summers in the gatehouse and on the mountain.
Monticello gatehouse and gatekeeper, believed to be
Eliza Coleman, 1912
Mary Elizabeth Henderson, granddaughter of Willis Shelton (d. 1902),
Monticello gatekeeper for almost fifty years
Rosa and Joseph Harris, grandson of
Eliza Coleman
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