Thomas Jefferson was heavily in debt when he died on July 4, 1826. His beloved home, Monticello, was nearly in ruins when it was purchased a few years later by Uriah Phillips Levy, a Jewish officer in the United States Navy. Over the course of the next 90 years, the Levy family not only owned Monticello but saved it from ruin on two different occasions. Along the way, however, the family endured the brunt of antisemitism, while also being confronted by the stain of slavery that existed at Monticello before the Civil War.
—Steven Pressman