On the Way to Gretna Green by Marian Devon

With Sharswood in his hands, her family is reclaiming its past. But, he hopes, maybe this purchase has brought some redemption. When he looks at the photo of his great-grandmother, Fredrick Miller sees sadness in her face. In an undated photo of Sarah that family members have shared with one another, the mother of seven wears wire-rimmed glasses and faces the camera with a somber expression. It’s unfortunate that a lot of us don’t.” “You’ve got to know where you come from,” he said in a phone interview from his California home. It also left him thinking about family history and the absence of that history for many people like him. “It can never be disputed.”įor Fredrick Miller, the 10.5-acre-estate he’d purchased for $225,000 ended up not being just a future gathering spot for the family, but also its first traceable point in the United States - an astonishing revelation for him. The newly discovered document “hands-down places them on the plantation,” Womack-Miranda said after seeing the entry. She would have been 2, although no age is given for her in the record. Sarah, his youngest sister, also is listed as a member of the household. In the 1870 Census record for Violet and David Miller, Samuel, age 5, is listed as a member of the household. An entry in the Virginia Slave Births Index uncovered this month by Luck-Brimmer shows that a boy named Samuel was born to Violet in Pittsylvania County on May 9, 1864. Between the many documents that the descendants of Sarah Miller have obtained, the fragments of family oral history they’ve sewn together and the proximity of the family to the plantation, they are certain that Violet and David Miller were among those enslaved at Sharswood. In the 1870 Census, however, Violet and David Miller lived just a short distance from Sharswood.

The 1860 Census does not list enslaved people by name, only by gender and age. From her death certificate, they learned that Sarah’s parents were Violet and David Miller. Sarah Miller, great-grandmother to Fredrick, Karen and Dexter, and great-great-grandmother to Sonya, died in 1949 at 81. They pored over court and real estate records, examined census data and revisited family tales passed down over generations.Īs the puzzle pieces connected, a clearer picture emerged. His sister and cousins scoured genealogy sites and contacted Karice Luck-Brimmer, who works in community outreach with Virginia Humanities in Pittsylvania County and researches local African American genealogy.

On the Way to Gretna Green by Marian Devon