Daniel P. Jordan, transformative leader of Monticello, dies at 85

Daniel P. Jordan, a historian who guided Monticello into the 21st century, safeguarding President Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop plantation while broadening its educational programs to encompass discussions of slavery and race, died March 21 in Charlottesville. He was 85.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter Katherine Jordan.

A dapper Mississippi native with a PhD in history, Dr. Jordan presided over Monticello for 23 years, serving as executive director and then president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation until his retirement in 2008. The group has owned the Charlottesville estate since 1923, preserving the property while educating visitors on the life of the nation’s third president, a self-taught architect who designed, built and rebuilt the house for more than four decades.

Under Dr. Jordan (pronounced JUR-dun), Monticello became more of a center for education and scholarship, even as it continued to draw about a half-million visitors a year. Monticello’s current leader, Jane Kamensky, described him in a tribute as “the most consequential president on the Mountaintop since Jefferson himself.”

“In the development of Monticello, he really defined what a historic house site could be,” said Sara Bon-Harper, who worked under Dr. Jordan as an archaeology research manager and now runs President James Monroe’s nearby estate, Highland. In a phone interview, she recalled that Dr. Jordan persuasively argued “that scholarship undergirds all interpretation,” and used his prodigious fundraising abilities to expand Monticello’s research departments, construct a library and establish an international center for Jefferson studies.

“I’m concerned with sharing knowledge,” Dr. Jordan told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1985, when he first arrived at Monticello. “I think it’s a missionary impulse I have. I think it’s important not to hoard a heritage.”

As a history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Dr. Jordan had sought to educate the general public, not just future academics. Declaring that he was “against historians who talk only to other historians,” he delivered lectures that were broadcast on public radio and led classes for inmates at the Virginia State Penitentiary.

He brought a similarly expansive approach to education at Monticello, highlighting the site’s history in national media appearances and documentaries and directing a summer seminar for teachers from around the country. He also sought to correct a glaring omission from Monticello’s tours, noting that when he visited the site before taking the job, he was dismayed to learn that interpreters made no reference to the fact that Jefferson owned a plantation, not just a house, and enslaved more than 600 people during his lifetime.

“We’re going to try to tell the most honest story we can about Jefferson and slavery and race and the plantation,” he told staff, “and it’s all going to be based on serious scholarship.”

Two years into his tenure, Monticello and the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson just a few miles down the road, were together named a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The recognition drew further attention to Monticello, where Dr. Jordan welcomed dignitaries including the Dalai Lama, in addition to greeting unassuming visitors arriving by minivan or tour bus. With help from the ticket office, he set up a “Magnolia Alert” so that he could offer an effusive hello to anyone who arrived with a Mississippi license plate. (Within a few minutes, he could usually find a point of connection. He returned to his home state each summer to vacation at the Neshoba County Fair, which calls itself “Mississippi’s Giant Houseparty.”)

Dr. Jordan was credited with overhauling the Thomas Jefferson Foundation from the bottom up, soliciting staff input while developing a new strategic plan, streamlining the organization’s mission and strengthening its finances. He carried out aggressive fundraising efforts, including through a collaboration with the U.S. Mint for the 250th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, which was marked with a 1993 commemorative coin.

The silver dollar initiative raised $5 million for Monticello, providing the seed money for a newly created endowment that grew to $120 million by the time Dr. Jordan retired, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Under his leadership, Monticello expanded its property and protected its views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, acquiring nearby Montalto mountain and opening a popular hiking and biking trail along the Thomas Jefferson Parkway. Dr. Jordan also oversaw the restoration of the plantation’s historic vineyard and road system; the identification and dedication of a burial ground for enslaved people; and a much-needed rebuilding of the house’s leaky roof.

“It leaked for him, and it leaks for us,” he told the New York Times in 1990. “We have patches on patches and buckets. In a storm, we hold our breaths.”

Perhaps his biggest challenge was figuring out how to navigate the nearly 200-year debate surrounding the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who was said to have borne several of his children. Early in his tenure, Dr. Jordan invited descendants of Hemings to commemorative events at Monticello, although he avoided taking a firm stance on the paternity issue as skeptics insisted there was no hard evidence.

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“If there’s anything like a party line, it’s simply this: We cannot prove it, we can’t disprove it,” he said.

But in 1998, a genetic study published in the scientific journal Nature concluded that Jefferson almost certainly fathered a child with Hemings.

Dr. Jordan moved swiftly, holding a news conference and instructing Monticello’s interpreters to initiate conversations with visitors about the study. He also convened a research panel to evaluate the DNA tests and any additional evidence, pledging that in true Jeffersonian fashion he and Monticello would “follow truth wherever it may lead.”

The panel issued its report in 2000, concluding that Jefferson was “most likely” the father of all six of Hemings’s recorded children.

That finding, and Dr. Jordan’s decision to incorporate the latest scholarship in tours at Monticello, infuriated skeptics and others who questioned why the institution needed to discuss the paternity issue in the first place.

“Slavery and race are uncomfortable subjects for many Americans — but they are in the mainstream of our interpretations at Monticello today precisely because they are part of the Monticello story,” Dr. Jordan said at a news conference, discussing the initial DNA study.

“The foundation has long believed that you cannot understand Thomas Jefferson without understanding slavery,” he added. “And that you cannot understand Monticello without understanding its African American community.”

The older of two sons, Daniel Porter Jordan Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Miss., on July 22, 1938. His father was a dentist, his mother a homemaker.

A quarter century after his birth, his hometown made national news as the place where three civil rights workers were abducted and murdered, prompting a federal investigation that became known as the “Mississippi Burning” case.

Dr. Jordan was a two-sport athlete at the University of Mississippi, playing as a forward on the basketball court (he stood 6-foot-2) and pitching for baseball teams that won back-to-back Southeastern Conference titles. He studied history and English, trained in the Army ROTC and served as student body president.

After graduating from Ole Miss with a bachelor’s degree in 1960 and a master’s in history in 1962, he served as an Army infantryman, with postings in South Korea and Western Europe. He taught history classes while abroad, through the overseas division of the University of Maryland, and returned home to continue his education at the University of Virginia, where he studied under Jefferson scholar Merrill D. Peterson and received his PhD in 1970.

By then he had joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth, where he rose to become chair of the history department. He wrote several books, including “Political Leadership in Jefferson’s Virginia” (1983), before being invited to join Monticello.

At times he showed a skill for multitasking that would have impressed Jefferson, who invented a machine that allowed him to write a letter and get a copy at the same time. He was credited with expediting the publication of Jefferson’s retirement papers, a monumental scholarly undertaking that spans 20 volumes and counting, and was also known for writing countless thank-you notes to donors, no matter the size of the gift.

“If somebody gave 25 cents, they got a note from Dan,” said Paula Newcomb, the foundation’s former director of development and public affairs. “One of the things Dan said all the time is good manners never go out of style.”

When Monticello received a $100 gift from Robert H. Smith, a Washington-area developer, Dr. Jordan sent a thank-you note that helped kick off a years-long relationship. Smith ultimately donated $36 million, becoming the most generous donor in the foundation’s history, according to Monticello.

Dr. Jordan attributed his success to his wife and frequent collaborator, Lewellyn “Lou” Schmelzer, whom he married in 1961. She survives him, along with their three children, Daniel III, Grace and Katherine; a brother; and six grandchildren.

In addition to his work at Monticello, Dr. Jordan served as chairman of the National Park System Advisory Board and the State Review Board of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. He was also a former vice chair of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and served on the governing council of U-Va.’s Miller Center for presidential and political history.

Through it all, he maintained an enduring fascination with Jefferson and the legacy he left behind. “We have 200 people trying to keep up with one man — one dead man,” he told the Times in 1998, after DNA evidence emerged in the Hemings case. “And we will never catch him.”

Still, he said, “I have always found him good company.”

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